


Triple Nine

by AnathemaAuthoress



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: (sort of), Angst, Blood Kink, Cannibalism, Canon Compliant, Crime, Death, Drama Chips (not really but it would explain a lot), Dubious Consent, Gore, Implied Relationships, Implied underage (but you can squint it away), M/M, Minor Character Death, More angst, Police Brutality, References to Depression, Seduction, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-07 19:50:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15915093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnathemaAuthoress/pseuds/AnathemaAuthoress
Summary: The Citadel has a dark underbelly where twisted crimes aren't uncommon. However, some things are unforgivable.Rookie Morty takes it upon himself to investigate a string of gruesome murders, but when he gets tangled up in the sin himself, can he be saved?





	1. Be Advised

**Author's Note:**

> I almost didn't think I was going to make it, but I humbly present my contribution to the Rick and Morty Big Bang 2018! 
> 
> I wouldn't have been able to complete this without the dedicated pressure from my husband, DevilishDaddy (https://authordevilishdaddy.tumblr.com/), and the wonderful support from my cheerleader, Xacular (http://xacular.tumblr.com/). Thank you both!
> 
> Special thanks to my wonderful artist, Sebastian, who provided two stunning pieces of art that can be found in chapters one and six. You can check out more of their art at https://thesabracollective.tumblr.com/
> 
> I also want to give a special shout-out to Mrs-Sundae (twitter.com/SundaeMrs), who was NOT my assigned artist but liked my description enough to go out of her way to make me a piece of art anyway. It can be found in chapter five.
> 
> I originally had plans for this story to be much longer and more graphic, but time slays our darlings. Even still I hope this work can inspire a little bit of chaos in you all! Please enjoy and let me know in the comments what you thought!

The ride was rocky, but amiable like most days. Rick drove both because he was a senior officer and because the rookie wouldn't have wanted to anyway. Sweaty palms and a flighty nature didn't make for safe driving, but Morty also didn't give himself enough credit.

Rookie was more a nom de plume than a proper title. Sure, he was new to the force, but he'd spent a year doing busts at the edge of the galactic rim. He'd seen drugs some cops hadn't even heard of. But he was new in the Citadel and had only just completed the required basic training a month ago. Since then, he'd been in the company of his partner, an established Cop Rick. Morty had been excited at first to have a partner. He'd always worked the rim solo or in squads where conditioning was so thick and duty so important it was easy to forget your own name.

That did seem like a funny concept now, of course. The Citadel was nothing but Ricks and Mortys, so if you weren't one, you could bet money you were the other. That didn't mean they were all the same though, not at all. In fact, down at the station nicknames were a common manner of distinguishing oneself. It was important since almost the entire force was made up of Ricks.

This Rick– _his Rick_ in a small and less binding way than the term might suggest–went by that and that alone.

"I used to be Rookie," the man had said deadpan the first time they'd met. "But that's you now."

Rick was a cold guy, but not in the way many Ricks were. He seemed distant more than angry, sad even. He didn't drink much either, which was something that had made Morty admire him almost at once. Despite Morty’s admiration and desire for the sort of buddy-cop relationship he'd always read about, there had been a distance of professionalism maintained between them in the few weeks they'd been saddled together.

That didn't stop Morty from trying. So, though the ride was slow and amiable, and quiet in a way that was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, Morty broke the silence. "Do you like bottles?"

Rick nearly jolted from the sudden sound, but he was getting used to these strange, offhandish questions. He didn't move his eyes from the road, just let them mull over the blur of concrete as they drove the familiar stretch. They weren't allowed to do much but patrol yet–something about easing the newbie into it. "You know I don't drink much," he replied simply.

"N-no," Morty chuckled. "Like, uh, all kinds of bottles. I collect them. I like the colors and shapes. All varieties."

Rick didn't like to talk. He didn't want to get attached, even though he hated himself for falling into that trap. It was so expected of him that he wanted to resist it like the plague, but at the same time he didn't think he could bring himself to give a shit. He just nodded at first. _I heard you, now stop talking._

"Yeah," the rookie continued against Rick's will, "I have about fifty or so. I try to only keep the best, you know, the best ones. I don't want to be a hoarder or something!" He laughed, loud and awkward, but it petered off in shame as quickly as it had bubbled up.

Rick shifted in his seat, but he couldn't suppress his curiosity. "What the hell do you do with that many bottles?"

"Oh, uh, I put notes in them mostly. It's sort of silly, I s-suppose. Ha, then I decorate with them. My mantel is full of 'em." Morty put his arm up on the door and looked out the open window. The wind ruffled up the curly hairs that peaked out of his hat and sat just before his ears, like little makeshift sideburns. He looked so relaxed, like he was going for a drive through the park.

                                                   

Rick tensed his grip on the steering wheel, reluctant to speak again. "What kind of notes?" He really didn't like unanswered questions.

Morty's eyes flitted from the window to Rick and back again, then casted down to his lap. "Yeah, um, stuff. Hopes and dreams? Hah! It's dumb."

"It's not."

Morty's eyes must have been wide, because Rick cleared his throat, and they didn't speak again for the rest of the ride.  

Morty supposed he could still consider it a win. He'd been born to a family with no Rick but had shown enough potential to still be of use to the multiverse. He'd been put into academy training in a period of heavy demand. The loss of lives had always been steady at the rim, even before the great wars.

Demand was high and offerings were low, and they didn't give a shit if he was a Rick or a Morty or a sentient rock.

He'd known about them, though, the Ricks. His only previous friend had been BorderControlPerson, and through him Morty had heard all about his counterparts and their legendary bonds. Morty wanted that, but his interactions with Ricks after arriving at the Citadel had made it painfully apparent that his desire was pretty common, and once more he was met with _demand high, offerings low_.

Focusing on work made it easy enough to not think about it constantly, but Morty's partner made it difficult. Rick was polite, even under his gruff exterior, and something in his glaze-eyed stare spoke of a faraway lingering longing. Yeah, Morty maybe had a little crush, and he wasn't quite sure if that was the normal reaction or not.

Fortunately, Morty wasn't childish, and he understood boundaries. He was happy for a little chat now and then.

It would have ended soon after anyway because their circuit was done, and they pulled up to the station just as darkness melted over the sky and stars, and street lights illuminated like fireflies.

"Did you bring dinner?" Morty asked as they passed through the glass entryway to the station. The lobby was massive, too large probably even for the traffic they received. The floor was checkered black and white and sometimes Morty liked to try to only step on one or the other as a sort of game. The check-in desk, usually occupied by Deputy Rick or one of the Officers, sat in the center, a ringlet of polished redwood with a chair tall enough to intimidate the local punks. There were entryways to either side, and it was the left-hand side that Rookie Morty and his partner took.

Past the hall was the room where they did most of their work. It was just rows and rows of desks, all cluttered with paperwork or knick-knacks and computers too shitty for a flock of geniuses to be using. Morty had picked up on that in his first few days. Ricks were brilliant and the station was literally swarming with them, yet everything around them was like something right out of a drama, demeaned and lessened as if for aesthetic. Or emotional effect. Morty didn't really like to think too hard about it.

Rick had put off answering the question for most of the walk, but it was clear Morty wasn't going to leave his side until he got an answer. "I forgot." He had, because he often did, but he usually didn't have to answer for it. Now that Rookie'd been officially assigned to the later shift, it was an unavoidable reality that Rick was now expected to eat.

Morty's face lit up with a smile that mirrored in his eyes. "I brought too much today, if you–ya know–if you want to share?"

Rick's sigh was audible, but he nodded anyway. "Sure. Fine."

***

Morty knew it was too much. Probably, certainly had been too much to pack extra, but he had guessed correctly that his partner was the sort of man that didn't believe in taking care of himself, and Morty, being the opposite, couldn't see the harm in lending support. It was just tuna anyway.

The locker room was shockingly the cleanest part of the whole station, which either spoke to Janitor Rick's diligent care or the fact that Ricks took a lot of pride in their possessions.

Either way, the polished navy lockers and the scent of lemon floorwax was just as enticing to Morty as any other part of the station. It reminded him, _this is real._

Of course, nothing was without recourse and he grabbed one of the dressing benches on his way to his locker. Even the chief wasn't without a sense of humor it seemed, and had seen fit to equipped Morty with one of the high lockers that stood just out of his reach. The rookie didn't mind and just saw it as one more way to prove himself.

The muscles in his arm tensed, golden skin lifted over evidence of years of training, as he dragged the long white bench before his locker. He started clocking in the numbers. His fingers had trembled the first time, terrified to stumble and so destined to, but that was weeks ago and Morty made the turns with assured motions.

He'd only just clicked the door open and fetched his lunchbox when he heard the voices. His head turned toward the sound and on instinct he froze.

"Did you get..." The sound was a whisper and Morty could barely make it out. It was probably just some of the other cops chatting, but the secretive nature of the whisper made the hairs on Morty's neck stand on end. He stepped down slowly so his boots wouldn't squeak.

"'Course I did. The fuck do you think?" The second Rick was much louder.

"Shut the fuck up," the first hissed.

"No one gives a shit."

Morty slunk silently around the corner. He recognized the Cop Ricks as Twinkie, so named for his obsession with the yellow desert–probably–and Dozer, one of the larger, iron-pumped Ricks.

Dozer looked terrified, twitchy almost, as Twinkie slipped him a bag of purple stones.

Morty felt the air catch in his lungs. Then he pushed it all out in a burst. "Aberrantizion is banned in the Citadel!"

Both Ricks faced him at once and the rookie's heart started to pound. His natural instinct was to run, so he dug in his heels and set his jaw. "I-I'm going to have to confiscate that."

Both Ricks started laughing at him at once.

"Oh, l-looky here, Dozer. He think–thinks he's a big boy!"

"Ooh, little Rookie thinks he's gonna snatch our candy."

Suddenly all the fear that had been present in Dozer was gone. Neither of them saw him as a threat. Morty fingered his holster. "I said, I'm going to confiscate that. Give it up and we'll talk about letting it off with a suspension."

Dozer laughed harder and Twinkie, before Rookie could react, had him by the throat and slammed him hard up against the lockers. The lunch box toppled from the rookie’s grip and hit the floor with a plastic thud.

Morty's spine shuddered and the pain raced from his shoulders to his neck and down his back, unsure where it wanted to throb the worst. His eyes had snapped shut defensively, but they fluttered open now and set his attacker with a leer.

"You didn't see shit, did you, Rookie?" Twinkie spoke through gritted teeth, a gesture that made his black-capped ones more apparent.

 Morty's voice sounded more strangled than usual. "Let. Me. Go."

"You little bitch," Twinkie gritted out. He pulled back his arm to land a punch, but Morty jerked at the last instant and the fist grazed his temple and smashed loudly against the lockers. The resounding clatter made his ear ring painfully.

Twinkie laughed, "Two for flinching."

Rookie's eyes sealed up again on reflex, but the blow didn't land.

“Want to give it a rest?” Rick’s voice, but not just any Rick.

Morty opened his eyes slowly and found his partner gripping Twinkie’s arm. The compression of uniform beneath his fingers made it look like it had to hurt.

Twinkie looked between the man holding him and the boy in his grip. He licked his blacked-out teeth irritably. “Little nark’s trying–thinks he can snatch our shit.”

“You can’t just walk away?” Rick’s brow went up in surprise. “He’s just a Morty. Can’t handle a Morty?”    

Rookie felt his chest ache, and it wasn’t just from the fist pressing down on it.   

“I was handling him,” Twinkie said, the sneer in his voice made the room crackle. Would he turn on Rick now?

But then Dozer was hunched over, trying to make himself look smaller as he groveled. “We were just minding our own.”

“Keep minding your own,” Rick said calmly.

“Let’s go, Twink. We don’t need this shit,” Dozer said, trying to keep his dignity, but making it very clear he was petrified.

Twinkie gave his teeth another pass of his tongue before dropping Rookie and yanking his arm free. “Fuck it. But I don’t want to hear shit about this from–”

“Won’t be an issue,” Rick said, obviously losing patience.

Muttering, Dozer and Twinkie took off. Morty just barely heard them mention Rick’s last partner.

“The hell were you doing?” Rick’s hands were on his hips and his eyes were narrowed.

“They were trading drugs. Aberrantizion,” Morty hissed. “We have to report them.”

“Let it go.”

“But–”

“Want to get your ass beat?”

“Well, no–”

“Then let it go. Our turf is out there. Not in here. Now come on, we have to go.”

Morty felt a vile sickness in his gut. The Citadel was his _turf._ Now he didn’t think he’d shake the knowledge that his fellow officers were breaking the law right under the district’s nose. Though, somehow he knew if he went ahead with a report now he’d be breaching Rick’s trust, and that he absolutely could not do. Rick was his only ally it seemed. “What about dinner?”

Rick spared the lunchbox a sullen glance. “Save it. We have to go.” He tried to remain sturdy, professional, but a grin yanked at the corners of his lips. “We got our first bust. Let’s go!”

*** 

There was a sort of solidarity between them when they hopped into the squad car. Busts were serious, but they’d been paper jockeys since Rookie’s arrival and it was a satisfying moment. Morty’s eyes locked on to the siren switch and Rick silently consented.

Rookie reached out with a hand trembling with excitement and flipped the switch that unleashed a wail that sang them all the way downtown.

By the time his hands were on his pistol, poised low to keep from any accidental firing, Morty’s hands were steady, trained fingers tightly perched with trigger safely out of grip.They’d gotten an anonymous tip that one of the city’s most notorious dealers, Ruby-Eye Rick, was dropping in at an old club for business.

But the scene had been too quiet when they’d approached the place on foot. Someone might have tipped off Ruby-Eye that the police were on the way, or it was some kind of trap. Morty wasn’t sure which was worse, but he wasn’t prepared to back down either way. He followed in step behind Rick with a grace the average Morty lacked.

They went in the false front, a door plugged into the brick wall against the alley that led into a simple shabby room. It was just a cover space, where paid men stood to keep guard, where the cops took bribes to turn their gazes away. That wasn’t in their plan, but it didn’t matter because it was empty. There was no sign anyone had been there lately, save for the flipped rug that was filthier even than the cigarette ashen carpet that was sticky from months old booze and piss. Besides that, cobwebs littered the edge of every wall and surface, except a ruffled old loveseat that was more planking than cushion.

Morty stayed near the entrance in case anyone suddenly made themselves known, while Rick moved deeper into the room. Something about the silence of it was eerie and created a sort of hollow tension in the rookie’s chest. It felt like the floor was about to drop out from beneath him. There should have at least been a stray or a fucking hobo, for god’s sake. Yet, nothing.

“I found it.” Rick’s hushed tone carried through the room with ease and Morty came closer to inspect the cellar door. Of course, it wasn’t a cellar, it was the club entrance. Rick opened it up slowly, and Morty rolled his arms up, gun straight ahead, but nothing appeared on the other side save for the darkness encasing a long staircase downward.

Morty lowered his weapon and the two trod quietly down the steps, boots barely squealing on the weakened lumber.

The closer they got to the bottom, the stronger grew a scent that made Morty’s nostrils flare in disgust. It was sickly and rotten like forgotten fruit molding on a summer sidewalk. It smelled like steel too, rusted, corroded iron, the undertone stench of a mechanics’ haunt.

A wall divided the stairs from wherever it led, and Morty’s heart thrummed in his chest. It concealed them and protected them from being given away, but it did the same for whomever was on the other side.  

Rick reached the corner first, signalled Morty to hang back. Then he lunged around the corner, gun elevated. “Put your hands up! You’re under–”

Morty felt certain his pulse had stopped when Rick’s words did. For an instant he flinched, waiting for the sound of bullets crunching bone or striking stone, but nothing came. There was light in the room below and it casted back enough that Morty could see absolute shock and horror on Rick’s face, the space around his eyes darkened by shadow.

Morty’s gun shivered in his grip, but he steadied it and came down the final few steps, knowing whatever he could find wouldn’t be as bad as not knowing.

Except he was wrong.

It was everywhere. Blood smeared along walls, drawn out like ribbons and dancing in an uncoordinated frenzy. Puddled up on the floor, drenching white carpets in ruby, everything reflected in red under soft, taunting candlelight.

Bodies had become something else. Sinewy, shredded avenues of vein and muscle. Ligaments tied to one another and drawn out, artery to artery, welded from one victim to the next. Dozens of sockets, hollowed of gaze, stared up toward anyone that might come to see. Stared up at _them_.

There was no flesh. Only red, endless shades of coagulated blood and ripened muscle. Even the pearly glints of bone that should have put the ivory crown upon a barren sea was tainted red, also red, too red. Mortal eye strained, doubting it could be so pure and emblazoned to every surface in such a complete and resognating way. Yet there it stood, contained as a painting or ink in a bowl. Captured in a moment on this twisted canvas.

The bodies strewn to be random but so very intentional, all faced the same way. All connected by wires running through joints and stitched fragments of the human form– _it had to be wires, had to be because nothing inside holds this shape on the outside–_ created a web.

Sticky and meaningless. Pretentious and terrifying. Morty turned away to retch.  


	2. Breach of the Peace

Morty could only describe his own mental state as  _ fragmented _ . He’d seen a lot of shit in his time at the rim, but at the worst of it he’d only ever discharged his phaser twice, seen two junkies dead on a floater, and found a fellow officer overdosed in the central center bathroom.

He couldn’t stop conjuring up the image over and over again. Almost no splatter distinguishable, like the walls had been painted. Mangled forms strung and manipulated. Some kind of message was there, embedded in carpet that would never be cleansed. What did it mean? It was probably just a warning, just–

“Stop.”

“What?” Morty jolted so hard the hand he’d been resting on nearly smashed his jaw.

“Stop thinking about it,” Rick said coldly with eyes narrowed. He’d sidled up and sat on the edge of Rookie’s narrow desk. “Christ, you look like shit. Did you even sleep last night?”

“Sleep?!” It was loud, too loud, and dozens of Ricks looked up from their desks in search of gossip. Morty sunk lower in his seat, made the cheap plastic wheels squeal as he pushed his weight downward. His next words were a hiss. “How in the fuck do you expect me to be able to sleep after what we saw?”  

“I expect you to do your fucking job.”

Morty was taken aback by Rick’s harshness and it seemed Rick was too, because he ran his palm down his face and sighed.

“What I mean is you have to focus. I know it was screwed up, but you can’t let that shit eat at you. We’re cops, sometimes we see shit.”

“We’re narcotics!” Morty felt rage rising up inside him, but he wasn’t even sure why he was angry. It wasn’t like he hadn’t always feared he’d run into something screwed up, but this took the cake far and beyond his imagination and it had only been their first bust together.

“Exactly, so stop thinking about it.”

“W-why would someone do something like that? The hell does it–what does it even mean?”

“It’s a serial killer,” Rick said with a reluctant sigh. “There have been a couple of scenes over the last few months, though nothing this bad. The force is on it.”

“He–she–they, th-they wanted us to find it, Rick. They wanted us to. It was a call-in.”

“Showing off is what creeps like that do. It doesn’t have any  _ meaning.  _ It’s just a big middle finger to all of us.”

“Have you ever seen anything like it before?” Morty sat up straighter again, tried to catch Rick’s gaze. His partner met his eyes but the look returned was steely and unreadable. Morty fiddled with his pen when he realized he wasn’t going to get an answer. “Is there anything we can do?”

“Leave it to homicide, Rookie. And let it go.”

***

There are likely a few thousand sayings floating around the multiverse about good advice. Advice seldom taken, advice wasted, advice spun round. Morty couldn’t remember a damn one clearly because he was still thinking about the crime scene. 

He sat alone in his one-bedroom apartment, wearing only his tank top, shorts, and socks, barely undressed from a long day of tedious paperwork, and cradled by the familiar embrace of his favorite worn-down armchair. Even the glimmer of his bottle collection lining the shelves and mantel couldn’t shine a light on the dark gully turning ever muddier in his mind. The twisted and broken limbs, no flesh, not a spec. It had to be somewhere, taken like a treasure, strung up like a tent? The very thought was too macabre for Morty’s gentle heart and his chest suffered an intangible sort of pain.      

Yet he continued to pull those images back. He ran his mind over them again and again, driven by sick fascination. Humans are innately curious creatures, but Morty loathed how he pondered at the same pace he balked. 

This had happened before. That reality was one that plagued him fully. How had the force failed to prevent this? How had this monster gone uncaged? This killer was dangling out bait like an expert fisherman, but a sadistic one only in it to watch the fish flop and die. 

For not the first time since his joining, Morty mourned the incompetence of the police. He knew they couldn’t be everywhere, couldn’t stop everything, but how could this be allowed?

Yet, how could they not? Twinkie and Dozer saw fit to trade code red drugs on property. That wasn’t the first or the worst of it either, Morty had heard the rumors. Rape rings, bribes, drugs were just the beginning.

“No,” Morty said softly. He pulled himself forward, pushed the rickety footrest back into place and cradled his head in hands, let his elbows press red marks into the flesh of his knees. 

He couldn’t start blaming this on the police. He ran his hands through his curly hair and stood. He wandered over and opened up the window, let the gentle wash of streetlamps flood through and drip into the decorative bottles on the sill. The light refraction created a kaleidoscope dance of blues and reds on his shabby gray carpet. It was soft in the dark of the room, but it made him feel lighter, less compressed.

It was all just something he needed to move on from. Anyone that dreamed of being a cop thought about the days like this with an eager and doubtful sort of naivete. Now that he was living it, Morty knew he had to live _ through _ it. He sat before the window and let the scratchy surface of his carpet brush his legs. The lights danced over his face and chest and he could see the colors as they shivered in and out of sight. He reached up to the window and pulled down an empty bottle and the small pad of paper and pen he kept nearby. He etched out a wish on the note and slipped it into the bottle before replacing it.  He let out a long breath and let some of the tension out at last. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it forever, but long enough to rest would be nice.

***

Morty went into work hopeful the next day. He put himself into his work and forced himself to smile with the same ferocity he had possessed every day before the call. He even managed to coerce Rick into eating.

They sat outside at one of the round white tables in the courtyard. They had a fair bit of land for a police station, mostly so the gardeners would have something to maintain. Large manicured hedges around the perimeter and lush rose bushes lining a cobbled path were meant to bring relief to a stressed out force, but most of the Ricks only came outside to smoke or drink.

Even in the dark, Morty liked it. Maybe he liked it more that way because the meager torches set up to light the surrounding area looked like fireflies and casted a calming warmth over the garden. It was almost too pretty for egg salad sandwiches.

“This–this is actually pretty good,” Rick said after he swallowed another mouthful.

“Haha! I’m glad you like it. And y-you’ll feel better too. Working on an empty stomach sucks.” 

Rick put down his food for a moment, wiped his hands idly on a napkin while he spoke. “Listen, I’m glad you’re doing better. I’m sorry if I came off harsh–or whatever–yesterday. I didn’t used to be such a hard ass…”

Morty felt like his partner had more to say but silence hung heavy for a moment and he chose to fill it. “No, listen. I needed to hear it. You’re right. Not our division. We gotta–we have to focus.  _ I _ have to focus.”

Rick’s expression suddenly softened into something Morty had never seen before and it was so vulnerable and concerned that the rookie almost thought it had to be a trick of the light. “Morty, you aren’t the only one who–”

“W-well, looky here! Looks like Rick and his little wife are having dinner. D-did she bake it up fresh for ya?” Twinkie, with blacked out teeth gleaming in a full grin, leaned in close enough between them that Morty could smell the Hostess and whiskey on his breath. 

The moment was completely shattered and Rick’s apathetic expression had returned in full force. He looked over his shoulder to see Twinkie had brought along a companion, but two wasn’t more than he could handle. “The hell do you want?”

“Ooh, so snippy! I was just wondering–I was just thinking how unfair it is y-you get such a cute little partner.” Twinkie swung one long arm over Morty’s shoulders.

Somehow Morty thought Twinkie managed to be just a bit more gangly than the other Ricks. The rookie made sure not to flinch under the man’s weight and instead pushed back so his spine was straight and he was, inadvertently, supporting most of the other cop’s weight. “He’s just lucky, I suppose,” Morty said, deadpan.

“Oh, lis–look at him! He knows he’s...fucking cute. Fucking tease.” Twinkie turned his head so his breath ghosted Morty’s ear. The rookie sneered in reply, but knew better than to try to pull away.

It seemed, in any case, he didn’t have to. All of a sudden, Twinkie was yanked off and up to his feet. Rick held him by the collar so the other man was aloft, toes barely scraping the grass. Rick’s voice came out low and gravelly, “You’re a drunk son of a bitch. Let me be clear in saying that I don’t give a fuck. But if you put those sponge-cake fondling fingers on my partner again, there’s going to be trouble.”               

“Whoa, b-big man!” Twinkie laughed, but it was that stuttering, nervous laugh. “Well, you know what? That’s just fi–that’s jus–fuck me, pal!”

“Yeah,” Rick sneered. “Fuck  _ you. _ ” He dropped the other cop like he was a sack of garbage and calmly sat back down to his sandwich.

Twinkie signaled to his lesser Rick and the two scurried off, muttering bullshit under their breath.

“Th-that was…” Morty blinked in surprise. “You don’t have to defend my honor or anything. But, uh, that was pretty cool.”

Rick was deadpan as he ate his sandwich. “They shouldn’t give you shit just for being…” He let himself trail off.

“New?” Morty supplied helpfully with a sly grin.

To his surprise, Rick met it with one of his own. “Yeah.”

They managed to finish their food in relative peace, but they weren’t back in the station five minutes before they were sent out. It was a real bust this time, a junky Rick working a bunch of unregistered Mortys in his lucrainium lab. The new Morty assignment squad took care of the captives after a call in, and Rookie Morty got to cuff the ringleader himself.

“Y-you were real quick back there, Rookie,” Rick complemented on the ride back to the station.

“Yeah? Thanks, Rick. Geez, I guess I just sort of acted on instinct.”

“F-fucking fuck! Can’t believe I got caught by a—by a fucking Morty,” the junky Rick griped from the back seat.

“Believe it,” Rookie said smugly.

Back at the station they booked the bastard and on the way back to their desks they overheard some of their colleagues in distress.

“C-crazy! There was just blood, fucking blood everywhere like you wouldn’t believe!” Shouted Mewly Rick, so named for the two dozen or so cat statues that decorated his desk.

Morty felt his blood run cold. The images of strewn human matter and the streaks of unforgiving red sieged his mind. He blinked hard to rid his vision of the trauma and tried to focus on what he was hearing. Both he and Rick had stopped dead in their tracks, so what was being said was clearly of interest to them both.

“It was the most messed up thing we’ve ever seen,” Freckles chimes in. “We called homicide asap-you know, real quick. Once, once we realized what was going on.”

Freckles and Mewly were partners and normal officers. They got sent out for the small stuff, resisting arrest, drunk and way too disorderly, domestic disputes. They were possibly less equipped to handle murder than Morty was.

However, while they both seemed pretty shaken up, neither’s eyes held the cold dissonance the scene Morty had witnessed had bestowed on both he and his partner. This had been lesser, somehow. Just one body from what Morty could make of the babbling. 

“Homicide should be all over this guy by now,” Rick said, as if sensing Morty’s discomfort. He placed a gentle hand on his partner’s shoulder and led him away from the conversation. 

Morty let himself be guided back to his desk and Rick settled atop the wood. It was their new chatting formation. Morty’s chair squealed as he eased his weight into it slackly. “What do you–what do you suppose drives a person to do something like that?”

“Kill someone?” Rick looked downright icy and very far away. “I suppose everyone has their own brand of justification.”

“No. Not that. Half the men in this department have killed someone. I mean, m-mangle them up like that, you know? Put them on display. It’s sick.”

“Probably just some Rick begging for attention. Or several. Hard to say with this brand of crazy.”

“Do you think it even could be just one person?”

Rick shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out when homicide takes them in.”

Morty nodded slowly. “Yeah, well, I got some paperwork to finish.”

Rick took the hint and retreated and left Morty to his thoughts.

Thoughts which only toiled in the coming weeks as case after case turned bloody. False tips were flooding in but couldn’t be pinned down. No leads and it seemed like homicide was sitting on their hands. Rumors were going around the precinct from one end to the next and Morty knew it meant he wasn’t the only one caught up in the drama.

It didn’t take long for his curiosity to spiral. It started out with small things. He started eavesdropping here and there, allowed tales of crime scenes to craft horrific images in his mind. He let those images fuel his resentment. Soon, after hours, he was using his laptop to investigate suspects. 

As a high-ranking narcotics officer, he had authorization to use the criminal database for necessary investigation. He shifted through dozens of pages of Ricks, visitors, and a few Mortys with the most serious indictments, but none of their modus operandi seemed to sync up with the one thing all the recent victims had in common:  _ no skin _ . 

Somehow idle sifting through old reports turned into asking around. That turned into personal field trips downtown with his gun and holster hidden under his civilian wear. It was dangerous, leeching the streets for information, but Morty was lucky enough to use his own appearance to slip under the radar. The one benefit to the treatment of Mortys in the Citadel was that no one took them asking questions seriously.  _ We’re such curious little bastards, after all, _ Morty thought to himself after casually getting a name from a Rick one evening. 

Turned out all his snooping paid off and the name he got was The Cult of Flesh. Morty had no direct evidence tying the cult to the events of late, but the title was telling enough to be the sort of place he might find a real lead. Along with the name, he got a date and time for a meeting. There were supposed to be a lot of believers there, and he thought he might be able to mine someone for info. 

He’d known when he’d received the little sliver of paper from the Informant Rick that this wasn’t his department. He had no business nosing around. But he had known that for weeks. Had known it when noncommittally asking fellow officers for details, had known it sifting through the database. Hell, he’d known it the moment the itch had started, and yet Morty could not help himself. He needed to see this through, but he promised himself if he found anything incriminating that he’d pass it off to the proper portion of the force. For the time being, he just considered it a hobby.

Which is exactly what he told his partner, without so many details.

“A hobby, huh? Like knitting?” Rick asked between bites of the fishsticks Morty had brought them for dinner one evening. 

Morty laughed and tried not to snort breading out of his nose. “Not exactly. I mean, s-something like that. It’s been helpful, you know, relaxing.”

“Hmm, maybe I should find a hobby. I used to collect stamps.”

“Really? Like interdimensional?”

“Yeah,” Rick snickered. “Oh man, I have some ridiculous ones. Like they feature weird stuff. There’s the basic ones like different leaders from different planets, but then like, I got a rubix cube one that actually folds up into a rubix cube, which is fucking cool. Then there’s this one featuring exotic butters, and one with a cat orgy. It’s weird, man. I should show you sometime.”

Rick had been speaking to Morty a lot more over the passing weeks. The rookie wasn’t sure if the trauma had bonded them, or if it was the dinners, or even just their mutual dislike of Twinkie, but in any case they’d been getting on better and Morty could see Rick opening up a little more each day. It made him happy in a small, normal way. It was hard sometimes to feel normal, even before he’d moved to the Citadel. “I’d love that, the-they sound really cool, Rick.”

Rick’s own chuckles died down slowly until he was just plain smiling, looking at Morty with something dangerously close to affection. “Um, hey. I was thinking, maybe since we have tomorrow off we can catch a late showing or something? Or dinner? I think I owe you one,” Rick snickered, gesturing to yet another meal he’d not provided himself. 

Morty’s heart thrummed. He knew the offer was only meant to be friendly, but that was good enough for him to feel a buzz of excitement, of approval race through him. He almost agreed at once, until he remembered. 

“Oh, shit....” His smile fell and he fiddled pointlessly with the handle of his lunchbox. His eyes darted to one of the nearby rose bushes so he wouldn’t have to look Rick directly in the eye. “I-I really want to–I mean, I-I’d like to–” Morty could hear himself relapsing into the nervous habits of the sort of Morty Ricks mocked and he cleared his throat and forced himself to look Rick in the face, if not in his eyes. “Sorry, but I already have plans. I’m going clubbing. I’d invite you but–”

Rick held up his hand, signaling that his partner didn’t need to explain. “It’s fine, Morty. I don’t dance.”

Morty smiled a little, apologetically. “Maybe some other day?”

Rick nodded, “Sure.”

Morty didn’t like lying to anyone under any circumstance, but he knew if he had told Rick the truth that his partner would not have allowed the little escapade Morty had planned. They might have managed breakfast or some other such thing, but they both knew neither would be awake before noon, and Morty had needed the rest of the day to prepare.

He bought a new outfit, which even he understood was probably too much, but he liked the cover of the disguise. Normally, even when he was out of uniform, Morty wore blue. So, the most obvious choice would have been the signature yellow shirt and blue jeans most Mortys sported, but the rookie understood that this was a cult scene and the crowd would likely be edgier. Still, he couldn’t imagine going overboard and ended up settling on a button-up yellow top and sleek leather pants that would have him mistaken for a Stylish or Preppy Morty. He knew with his wavy, untamable locks and gentle nature that he couldn’t pull off a greaser, nor anything else that might have stirred up trouble by sight. He decided it was close enough. He slipped his shoulder holster on underneath his button-up but over his tank top, and prayed he wouldn’t have use for it.   

The time slipped by slowly and left him wringing his hands.  _ It’s not a big deal, _ he told himself. He was just going to listen in. It was supposed to be a recruitment meeting, so he wouldn’t be the only one out of place.

He let himself be fashionably late, since arriving right on time seemed both eager and risky. Morty was surprised when he found the location with ease, and more surprised still when the doorman let him in without so much as a confrontation. 

The club was on the east end of the Citadel in the downtown where construction was still ongoing. It had a staircase on the outside that led down under a dilapidated building. It used to be a sandwich place, then a coffee joint. Morty didn’t know that from experience, but the lettering above the entrance had been scraped away and lingering grime around where the letters used to be spelled out: Lil Rick’s Sandwich Hut. Meanwhile, the inside reeked of columbian coffee beans stronger than the precinct did at 3 am. If Morty was anything, he was observant.

Of course, once inside the dark roast-scented asylum, there was plenty to observe. It was night outside, but the streetlamps kept things bright, even in the wounded city. In the club, however, it was dark. The underground haven was boxed in by a lack of windows and the lighting was instead derived from red and green bulbs that lit only enough of the room to create a sense of otherworldliness.

Morty assumed the ambiance was for both the message and mania. He figured more than a few dozen of the attendees were high already. The bodies strung along couches, and giggling gaggles of red-eyed Mortys confirmed that suspicion. 

That was another thing, the place was packed. Rookie had expected a small turnout, but for a so-called cult meeting the joint was jumping–sort of. Loud music was pulsing from nearby speakers and some of the hypnotic lights were twirling, but almost everyone was sharing hits or lounging around, pawing at one another.

Sometimes it was easy to forget Ricks and Mortys were usually related. The way they treated each other, the way they  _ behaved _ , was so far flung from normalcy it was physically jarring. Then again, the way they treated themselves was even worse.

The place itself was in good shape, the walls freshly painted, sofas plush, bar manned and stocked. A sign dangled over a far stage gave the place a proper title, Den of Sin.  _ Seems apropos, _ Morty thought bitterly. The place was teeming with code violations, but he reminded himself that wasn’t what tonight was about.   

With a deep breath, he wiggled past a few pulsing Ricks that had made a walkway their dancefloor, scurried past the plumes of smoke coming from old eatery booths, and found a place at the bar near a Rick with his hair slicked back and a collar around his neck. Morty took one glance at the man and cursed himself for not taking the punk route with his attire. It might have been easier to mingle.

As it turned out, this Rick didn’t seem to mind his attire at all. In fact, he leaned in a little closer, close enough Morty could smell the smoke on his breath. “H-here there.”

“Oh, hi,” Morty said carefully. He thought he’d have to strike up a conversation, but it seemed luck was on his side.

“Aren’t you...you’re a pretty one aren’t ya?”

“I, uh, sure am a Morty,” Rookie said with a smidge of the self-depreciation he actually felt towards compliments of the kind.

“S-sure are. You a grandy or a goody?”

“Huh? Um, neither?”

The Rick snorted when he laughed. “I knew you were new around here. I don’t–see I don’t usually w-waste my time explaining but you’re a little cutey, so here ya go. Grandies are Mortys that don’t swing my way, you get that? D-do ya...do ya understand?”

Morty’s expression didn’t falter. “Yeah, I got it.”

“And goodies, well they’re–they’re  _ good boys.  _ Get it?”

“Got it.”

“Hot. So...which are you?”

Morty only had a second to mull this over and only even that because this Rick was clearly intoxicated. Since he’d never known his grandfather, he’d never had the chance to get attached to Ricks in that fashion. However, he did still feel a paternal approval whenever a Rick treated him kindly–well some Ricks. Others gave him a  _ different _ sort of feeling. His face flushed and he was grateful the lights of the club didn’t show off his colors too well. 

In the end, it boiled down to individuals where Morty’s attraction was concerned, but he figured for the sake of the long game he should do what would best turned him intel. “In that case, I’m a goody,” he said with as demure an expression as he could muster. He prayed he didn’t look heinously awkward.

Either he didn’t or the Rick didn’t care. “Ahaha! Good news!” He threw one arm around Morty’s shoulders, a gesture that made the smaller man want to shuck the drunk bastard off and to the floor, but he resisted the urge. “H-hey barkeep, a whiskey-cola for my little buddy here.”

The bartender rolled his eyes and did as bidden. Morty accepted the drink with a forced stutter of gratitude. He started to worry if he looked too composed someone would catch on.

“So what brings you here, little goody?”

“Um, I heard Flesh was meeting here.” Morty was careful not to give the full name just in case, but he didn’t see a point in beating around the bush too much. Ricks respected directness.

Slick Rick narrowed his eyes, not in a suspicious way, but in a drunken, thoughtful way. “Uh, oh, ummmm.” Morty half expected drool to start running down the old man’s chin before he finally spoke up with some sense. “Right!” He clacked his glass against the bar for good measure. “That weird club or whatever the hell. Yeah, they–their leader is on the stage back there.” Slick tossed his arm back and pointed his thumb at the other side of the club. There was indeed a Rick there, speaking to a small crowd of gatherers. The audience seemed captivated and oddly quiet, but Morty couldn’t hear what the Rick was saying from this distance.

“I was hoping to, uh, hear that guy speak,” Morty lied easily.

“Oh, you, you uh, want to mosey over?” Slick stumbled off the stool and helped Morty down as well. The cop had hoped to shake the guy, but he could endure his presence. This was better, perhaps. He had no way of knowing what was going on here or if it might escalate. He’d left his drink behind, but Slick was gentlemanly enough to bring it along. 

When they got close enough to the stage, Morty could make out the Rick more clearly. He didn’t have any odd alien accoutrements, but he wasn’t a completely run-of-the-mill Rick either.  He had a long scar running diagonally over the left side of his lips, and a smaller one that streaked over his right brow and nettled the hairs in opposing directions. His eyes had dark rings that may have been amplified by the lighting, but it was difficult to tell. He wore the standard Rick garb, sans lab coat, and stood alert. His voice came out smooth and unfettered by the slur of intoxication. “–to be completely at peace. And to be at peace is to have died,” he growled. 

Morty sat on one of the couches and tried to ignore the way Slick settled in close beside him.    

“Conflict is the only moral obligation we owe ourselves. You cannot build until something else is broken. Look at the city and how it’s begun to shift and to-to change! That didn’t come about because we sat idle and improved. In theory, we want to be better but we don’t strive until we’ve been knocked back down. Two steps forward, one step back.”

Slick scoffed. “Th-this guy, am I right? Jesus.” He knocked back some of his beer, but kept one arm around Morty.

The cop ignored the drunken hanger-on and tried to focus on what was being said. It seemed like basic cult fare from what he understood. It was his first experience with it personally, but weren’t charisma, and a tendency to a preach dogma sure signs of sociopathy? Or something like that. Morty wondered if this Rick was a recruiter. The doe-eyed gazes of his onlookers made that seem likely.

“Naturally, it’s our responsibility to craft chaos so change might come forward. To hazard into dangerous experiences for the sake of everyone. To peel away our own flesh to cleanse the monotony. Why drench our bones in liquor and shoot our nerves full of adrenaline when we continue to feel nothing! Why endure it?”

Morty looked around and noticed most of the attending were other Ricks, with only a high or desperate Morty here or there. Many of them gave quiet chimes of approval.

“When the world does nothing for us? When we can’t even count on ourselves? When the police are running the drug rings and everyone is the same but no one is equal?” Rick’s eyes seemed to fall on Morty then and the cop felt his heart ricochet in terror, but an instant later the gaze had flittered off. “We say we embrace chaos, but it’s relative. You have to remove yourself from your personal familiar. That is flaying the flesh. We must flay the flesh!”

Morty wasn’t sure if the speaker was being literal or figurative, but the whole speech stirred up in him a mixture of uncertainty and that same morbid curiosity he felt each time he thought back on that crime scene. “How do you purpose we do that?” He hadn’t meant to speak out loud. The words just slipped out, and he felt foolish for calling attention to himself.    

The Rick’s eyes darted over to Morty and he moved forward on the stage, slowly, like a prowling cat. He sat at the edge of the stage so he was closer to Morty’s level. His lifted his scarred brow and a wicked grin settled over his features. “Remove the dichotomy between good and evil. Nothing matters. Everyone is going to die.”

“So you’re a nihilist. Or an anarchist. How does that make you any different than any other Rick?” Morty was in it now, the Rick was staring directly into him. Slick snickered like it was all in good fun.

The Rick didn’t waver. He lifted his arms up in a gesture of delight. “On the contrary, my Mouthy Morty! I’m an optimist. You see, what most fail to grasp is that in nothingness comes freedom. If nothing amounts to anything then there is only each moment and so each moment should be pleasure, improvement. Chaos is but a normal function of existence. We break things down, they build back up, and in the end the world is better. Better world, better moments.”

For a splint second, Morty had nothing to say. It didn’t sound crazy. It didn’t even sound wrong. In fact, it almost did, in a way, seem optimistic. Better moments did sound, well,  _ better _ . But more than the words there was something in the way they were said, something in the smiling yet devious expression of this Rick that Morty that found truly alluring. Before he could snap from his trance, someone else interjected.

“Yeah and when you die all these assholes get the-the best moments of your damn life,” Slick jeered and gestured about with his beer, for the first time letting up on Morty’s shoulders.

The speaker turned his gaze on Slick and the stare–a moment before intense, but almost sensual–turned dark like a snake about to lash out at prey. “That’s selflessness. Giving something away so someone else might feel something. Isn’t that what humans are supposed to strive for?”

“Last I checked I was a Rick. A-and Ricks don’t give a shiiit! Am I right? That guy knows I’m right.” Slick laughed and rocked back and forth on the couch, wholly amused by himself.

The other Rick was glaring daggers so intense that Morty scooted away from his present company. However there was no attack, no square off. Rick just said softly, “Then I don’t think this fellowship is for you.”

Slick scoffed drunkenly and staggered to his feet. “Fine. Fuck your freaking church shit. Let’s go, goody.”

“I’d like to stay and hear the rest,” Morty replied, never taking his eyes off the scarred Rick.

Slick made a disgruntled sound in the back of his throat and forcefully handed Morty his whiskey. “Weren’t that cute anyway,” he muttered as he stalked back toward the bar. Several others–swayed perhaps by the disagreement, or maybe their attempts to kill a few dull moments had simply run up–stood and left as well. But the ones that were left seemed ensnared. Morty only noticed now that a few of the Ricks looked almost mischievous, even as they gazed at the speaker with reverence. 

_ Followers? _ Morty pondered.

“There will always be those that reject change. They claim to despise arrogance, stupidity, stagnation, and yet they display these qualities themselves.” Rick followed this statement with a chortle of amusement. “But not you guys, am I right?”

The more casual address was met with a small wave of hoots and hollers.

“So here’s the deal, if you want to party with us you have to prove yourself.” He pulled a small bag of white unmarked pills from his pocket and held them up for the others to see. “Leap of faith. Everyone who takes one gets a special address to a private party. No casuals allowed.”

The onlookers were more than happy to take free pills, didn’t seem to matter if it was breath mints or poison.

Morty was suddenly taken aback. Was this a cult or just some pretentious drug ring? Either way, even if this had nothing to do with the murders at all, he felt he had an obligation to get that address. In a moment, the Rick was before him and he held out the small plastic baggy. 

He sensed Morty’s hesitation and grinned. “It’s harmless. I wouldn’t poison my own people. You’re not afraid are you, Mouthy?”

Two things occurred to Morty in that instant. The first was that, while he’d gotten his information from an informant, most of these men had likely gotten it by word of mouth. More than likely by recruiters, people that could see a desperation in them. The second was that Morty felt a similar desperation, drawn from different sources of course, but desperation nonetheless.

He gave in to it as he reached into the bag and pulled a single pill out. He forced a smile as he slipped it onto his tongue and used the whiskey to wash it down. He could have faked it, perhaps, but the Rick’s gaze was unmoving now, fixed on Morty like a hawk.

He didn’t move until Morty had swallowed and the cop was left alone on the couch to stir in his own budding panic.  _ Nothing, it was probably nothing _ , he thought in a rush to slow his beating heart. Yet even as he tried to talk himself down, the room began to spin. The red and green danced at the edges of his vision before bleeding inward and spiraling all other color together like the mixing of paint. 

His eyes widened then squeezed close in an attempt to keep his wit. “Fuck,” he hissed. He was alarmed by how aware he still felt even as his vision became kaleidoscopic. He pushed himself to his feet.  _ Get out get help, get out get help, _ he told himself.

He felt something grip his arm and looked back to see a horrible, shivering mass of flesh and limb. He must have screamed, because an instant later he could see nothing, but he felt a gentle weight against his eyes and a voice flooded his ear.

“Don’t be afraid of the chaos. I’ll see you soon.”

The next thing Morty knew he was stumbling down the city street. At least, he assumed it was the city street, from the dozens of glowing eyes and the wavering liquid concrete. Had he escaped or been led out? It didn’t really matter, he needed to get somewhere safe since it was getting harder to tell logic from the drug. He stumbled idly for a moment or two before remembering his phone. He leaned against a graffiti painted wall and closed his eyes because it was easier to think that way. 

Morty pulled his cell phone from his pocket and felt out the buttons. He’d never been so happy to have one of those outdated models with the physical keypad. He hit speed dial one and pressed it to his ear.

The shrill sound of the ringing made him shiver and sweat began to build up on his forehead. Then at last the familiar voice came on the line.

“Hey, Rookie. Change your mind about dinner?”

Morty could hear the strain in his own voice and loathed how it would likely kill the excitement in his friend’s. “R-Rick, I really need your help.”


	3. Standby

Morty didn’t have much recollection of the night after his phone call, but he’d awoke in his own bed in his boxers and tank top with a headache worse than any he’d ever experienced. He’d managed to stagger to the kitchen and downed some aspirin with half a gallon of milk before he saw the note on his kitchen table.

 

_Rookie,_

_Saw you weren’t going to die so I took off. I put in a report on that club. We need to talk._

_-Rick_

 

Morty sighed and sunk down in the chair by the table and cradled his forehead in his hands. His head was killing him and he felt like a moron. He’d taken illegal substances, and for what? He hadn’t gotten an address and even if he had, it wouldn’t matter now. If a bust went down on the club, then the ones that got away surely wouldn’t be frolicking in any other shared haunts until the heat died down.

“I’m an idiot,” he mumbled into his palms.

***

By the time work started, the headache had left but the shame had not, so he certainly wasn’t expecting applause when he walked through the door. Morty’s eyes went wide as he took in his colleagues’ expressions. Some were joyful, others impressed. Others though, held darker gazes, but Morty didn’t have time to analyze it before Rick was by his side, guiding him to his desk.

“Wh-what’s going on, Rick?”

Rick took his normal place on the wooden desk as Morty settled into his seat with a flabbergasted expression on his face. “They heard about the bust.”

“The bust?”

“Yeah from that little undercover job you pulled,” Rick supplied deadpan.

“Th-they know about that?”

Rick’s face was unwavering, he seemed unhappy. “Yeah, well, your voice isn’t that hard to fake.”

Morty’s lips parted to speak but he closed them slowly. He understood now. Rick had made the call on Morty’s behalf, and had taken him home rather than to the hospital. Now he’d get all of the glory without risk of suspension. “Thanks,” he managed to choke out.

“For what?” Rick’s voice was biting and he leaned forward so his face was inches from Morty’s before he hissed his next words, “For covering up that stupid shit you pulled? Don’t get it twisted. If they thought you were taking, they’d start riding my ass. I didn’t do it for you and I won’t do it again.” With that he stood and left Morty alone.

The rookie didn’t think his chest had ever hurt so badly. It was like a stabbing knife moving between his ribs relentlessly. He swallowed back the instinctual urge to cry and instead grabbed the squishy, yellow duck stress toy he kept on his desk. He crushed it over and over until the squeak started to sound more like a groan.

Fine. He’d done something stupid and dragged Rick into it. He had to deal with the consequences. Morty was a big boy. He could handle it.

In fact, where his bosses were concerned, he’d expected some sort of punishment, reprimanding at the least for going undercover without station sanction, but it seemed none of the higher-ups gave enough of a shit about anything to actually bother. It also could’ve been that they were just busy. Morty didn’t find out until halfway through his shift from Mewly that the bust had brought in about thirty major users, including a dealer or two. There was suddenly a lot more paperwork for narcotics to handle. And a lot less crime on the streets.

Not everyone was thrilled about it.

Morty got home one of two ways after work each day. If Rick was available and offered, or the rookie asked, he could get a lift. If Rick was staying over or Morty simply wanted to avoid being a burden, or get some fresh air, then he’d walk. His apartment complex was only a few streets over and even at the crack of dawn, with the sky still dark, there was enough respect and fear for the uniform that he could get there without being hassled.

Obviously, Rick wasn’t in any mood to be doing favors, so Morty walked home that night. The station sat in a busy part of the city, so there were lots of office buildings and back alleys to flank his path. Unfortunately, that meant one moment he was alone and the next there was someone trailing behind, and he hadn’t seen them coming.

He didn’t think about it at all at first, it was just another normal guy coming home from work. But after a few minutes, Morty got a tingling sensation. It ran up and down his spine, that itch that comes to those that know they are being watched. He glanced at the glassy windows of the store fronts he passed. There was just enough light from the city to illuminate the wavering figures behind him. All in black, three of them.

Morty felt suddenly cold and a nausea rolled in his gut. Even with a gun, three would probably be too much to take on without help. He picked up his pace, but they met it. No longer concerned with staying steady, he broke into a run and turned sharply at the next street.

Only to run headlong into a darkly cloaked Rick. The man gripped him painfully by the arms and Morty immediately began to struggle.

“Let me go! I’m an o-officer of the law! I-I’ll have you arrested!” Morty loathed both the stutter and the high squeal of his voice, it gave away his terror all too clearly. His fingers groped blindly at his hips, but his arms were being pressed down hard in place so there was little he could do. He craned his neck to see the others as he heard their footfalls and menacing laughter.

They surrounded him and one pulled something from his pocket. For a moment, Morty thought he was going to be stabbed, but then all the lights on the street went out, cloaking them in total darkness save for the dull hum of light beaming from the device. Morty didn’t get a good look at it before the glow disappeared too.

At first all he could hear was the murmur of a chorus of confused residents wondering where their power had just gone, and the long squeal of tires turning onto different paths. Then there were lips dangerously close to his ear, teeth inches away, gnashing as if wanting to bite his ear clean off.

“You little shit,” came the low growl of a Rick.

What Morty felt then had to be something biological, something ingrained deep in his DNA, because he’d never had a Rick of his own and very little family at all, but that voice struck him deep and personal and set through him a sort of pain and terror that came with familiarity. The sinking of his stomach and pressure in his chest that couldn’t be brought on by anything less than a kind of betrayal. But this wasn’t his partner. This Rick stank and Morty could hear in his tone that he usually screamed more than the others. No, this feeling came from a soul linked through millions of bodies and dimensions. It came from a dark sort of knowing. An instinct.

Morty was afraid he might piss his pants.

“You need to learn how to keep your nose clean, Rookie,” the gravelly Rick continued to hiss loudly enough to make Morty’s eardrum throb.

“We’ve only got a few minutes before the backup kicks on,” another Rick muttered impatiently.

“I-I’m kinda trying to–to set a fucking scene here?” Gravelly Rick complained.

“He gets the idea,” groaned the Rick holding Morty’s arms.

“Fuck it! Consider this your warning, little bitch.”

A sharp pain suddenly cracked against the back of Morty’s calves. He unleashed a scream and his legs fell out from under him before he could process the ache radiating from the contact point. He remained held aloft by the Rick clasping him and the tension from the pressure on his biceps suddenly doubled as a result. Before he could protest or gather himself enough to fight back, there was the solid pain of a kick landing against the base of his spine.

“Ahhhh!” Morty unleashed a high-pitched wail and began to thrash in the hold. He couldn’t see his attackers, couldn’t get his hands on his gun or around their necks. Then his knees felt like shattered glass as he was dropped down onto them.

Pain started to flair against his ribs and spine as they gathered around, kicking and stomping. Long fingers twined in his hair and yanked his head back just before a fist clobbered his cheek. He heard the audible crack of the contact and then felt a numbness as the flesh swelled.

 _Bullshit,_ Morty thought in utter contempt and sorrow. _This is bullshit._

He knew there was no fighting back, loathed as he was to accept it. He pulled his trembling arms up to protect his head and let himself tumble to his side. He pulled himself into fetal on instinct to protect his organs and rode it out.

The assault was like a hundred fireworks. There were seconds of nothing, just a dull hum before brief but explosive bursts of pain. All the while, Morty wanted to cry, but didn’t purely out of spite. He felt that chill of terror freeze over into pure icy hatred. He hadn’t done anything to deserve this. This wasn’t supposed to be part of the job.

Eventually, the onslaught dwindled and Morty hated it more because it gave the pain time to roost, to settle into his cracked bones and fractured ego.

“Stick to the petty users from now on, or you’ll have to answer to Ruby-Eye!” Hissed a Rick before they all made their hasty retreat.

Morty just lied there, soaking in ambivalence and blood from split skin. Eventually, the ache in his head, the disastrous, all consuming hum, turned violent and as the city lights came on, the darkness flooded in.

***

The rookie woke up in a hospital some time later. Rick, his partner, was there looking concerned. Morty looked up and, even as his heart thudded with joy, his head cursed him. _He doesn’t care about you._

Morty recoiled a bit at his own thought as he sat up slowly. _He’s here, isn’t he?_

“Hey, how are you feeling?” Rick’s voice was almost too gentle and it set an unsettling pit into Morty’s stomach.

“Groggy but painless. They shot me up?”

“It was mostly fractured bones, bruising.”

“I don’t feel anything.” Morty’s fingertips ghosted the cheek that had swollen, expecting pain, but nothing came. The flesh was smooth, as it should be. He still marveled at the technology the Ricks utilized and so often took for granted. He was fully healed, no marks or cuts or shattered bones. Nothing to scar him from the attack. Nothing physical anyway.

“Couple of business Morty’s called you in. You were there all night,” Rick sounded almost wounded. Guilty perhaps? By extension, guilt bubbled up in his partner for having doubted him. “If I had known what happened…” Suddenly there was anger in his expression. “Did you see who did it?”

Morty shook his head. “It was just some thugs on Ruby-Eye’s payroll. Nothing worth wasting resources on. Narcotics has its hands full already.”

“Yeah, well, that’s my fault. I didn’t think it through when I made that call. I thought maybe...I thought wrong.”

“You were covering for me,” Morty said softly, feeling suddenly like lying back down. “If anyone found out I was prowling there and didn’t turn it in I’d be in deep shit. I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Rick muttered. “Y-you know, for what I said.”

Morty just hummed in understanding. “I’ll do better, but I’m not going to stop doing what I signed up to do.”

Rick shifted, either understanding the meaning with discomfort or trying to dissect or discard the words. Morty didn’t care which.

***

The rookie was distant when he came back to work. Not icy or violent, just quiet. His head was screaming with questions and accusations and he let them all bubble on the inside. It would have gotten worse over time, but something changed.

The killings stopped, abruptly.

For three weeks, there were no more staged scenes, no more gruesome kills. Everyone started to believe the killer had been in the bust. It lifted the rookie’s mood a bit, but something still seemed off on the inside. It wasn’t because of the attack.

Morty’s mind kept flittering back to that Rick from the club and his words. The meaning of his babble. Chaos. Upheaval to bring about change. Was that what Morty had done by violating his oath and snooping around? Or was it what was happening now? A quiet before a storm before a peace?

He tried to clear his head, but paronoria and a looming factor kept him from letting himself relax. He was sure he was being followed. Despite Rick’s insistence, Morty still walked home most nights. He wasn’t going to have his personhood stolen by fear. He could take endless hits, but he couldn’t go on scared to walk home at night.

The first week was fine, but after that the sensation started. Every night he felt a presence, but no one ever came out.

“You’re traumatized,” Rick said with as little callous as any Rick could manage.

Morty wove his brows in irritation. “No, I’m being fucking followed. That blood-addled crime scene was traumatizing. Getting beat was just frustrating. I’m telling you, I’m not crazy.”

“I never said you were crazy,” scoffed Rick, clearly offended. “I’m saying maybe you went through something upsetting and now you’re paranoid. Which is natural!”

Now it was Morty’s turn to scoff. He turned his chair toward his computer and started to type, done with the conversation.

“Listen, if you are being followed, don’t you think it’s all the more reason for me to drive you home?”

Morty didn’t reply and all Rick could do was sigh and return to his own work.

Despite his certainty that something was amiss, Morty was able to fall back into a normal work pattern. Of course, it was precisely when he was certain things were dealt with that the tip came in.

It was supposed to be a trade deal going down. Rick and Morty would go to the scene and, when the drugs switched hands, they’d take down both sides. They’d done a few like this that always went off without a hitch, but when they got to the scene there wasn’t anyone there. At least not anyone living.

Morty found the body this time, nearly tripped on it as they surveyed the scene. Rooted in the barren place against knoll where grass didn’t grow as high, there rested the unmistakable red lines of exposed muscles, drawn back to bare teeth, drained arms folded over the musculature and bone hollow of chest. Wide eyes stared lifelessly upward but still seemed to plead for release.

Rookie wasn’t sick this time. Instead he stood stock still, staring. His mind spun. _Rend the flesh. Rend the flesh._

“Fuck, shit, don’t look at it,” Rick said and took his partner by the shoulders.

Morty wasn’t sure when he’d gotten there. How long had he been staring at those eyes? They were so wide, so full of emotion even in their dulled state. Captivating and horrifying, like the spiral of a black hole.

“It isn’t over,” Morty muttered.

“Dispatch, get homicide and clean up down here. We have a DOA. Victim has been devoid of his blood–and skin.” Rick sent in the report while he coaxed Morty away from the body. “Are you okay?” he asked when they’d cleared it by a few feet.

The last time Morty had seen a corpse, he’d come away shaking, ill, and hollow. This time he felt confused and thoughtful. “The killer is taunting us. He wants to keep jumping us like this. Fucking with us.”

“They’ll catch him,” Rick tried to reassure. His hand gave Morty’s shoulder a squeeze.

Morty could only nod. “Yeah, I’m sure they will.”

They didn’t, of course. At least not soon enough to Morty’s liking. He even went so far as to pry into homicide’s case files again, but there were no leads. The urge to look into things himself intensified. He tried to fight it off by cleaning his house on his day off to keep from going out and getting into more trouble. As he polished the dishes, his mind roamed over his own behavior.

 _Why do I always do this?_ he wondered.

Morty had very nearly been fired from the rim for overstepping his bounds. He’d once pulled his laser on a passerby on a hunch. The inspection squad had let him through, but Morty had sensed something was wrong. That impulse had turned out to be correct–that the alien was responsible for kidnapping a missing girl and trying to smuggle her over the rim–but it didn’t matter. He’d broken a rule. The situation playing out like it had was all that had kept him on duty. That wasn’t the only incident, just the worst. He had a bad habit of trying to do more than he was allotted.

 _You need to learn to rely on others,_ BorderControlPerson had been found of reprimanding.

The trouble was, as much as Morty loved people and wanted to protect them, he didn’t trust them. He never had, not fully. He wanted more than anything to have someone he could rely on, but people always let him down. It was a sort of strange headspace to live in. An optimist that couldn’t trust, always hoping for the best and expecting the worst.

The shrill cry of his laundry broke his concentration and he changed chores. It was good to keep his hands busy, even if his mind was free to dig too deep.

While he was hanging up his clean clothes, he noticed a burst of yellow bunched up at the corner of his closet. He knelt down and pulled out the top he’d been wearing to the club the night of the bust. It still stank faintly of liquor and smoke. He’d never washed it. It had been piled up on the floor when he’d awoke the next morning and he’d merely kicked it into the closet to be dealt with later.

Morty sighed. A month later and he was finding unwashed clothing. _Gross_. He didn’t want to become a slob. He abhorred that stereotype, the old balding, fattening, slovenly cop that’s seen too much. “No amount of bullshit is going to keep me from washing my clothes,” he muttered as he shook the garment out. It was badly wrinkled, but he could iron it.

It was when he was walking it to the laundry room that he noticed something odd. A strip of paper, like a fortune from a chinese cookie, was pressed flush to the semi-translucent yellow pocket.

He pulled it out and dropped the shirt in surprise. There, in tiny print, was a string of numbers. Coordinates.

Morty’s breath caught. It was idiotic, to think about going. To even consider it. It was likely they’d never used it after the bust. Then again, wasn’t it just as likely they had no reason to believe the cops could find it? If it was some kind of hotbed it was surely up and running again now, a month later.

He knew he shouldn’t, but he did anyway. This time he wore his gun over his shirt but under his coat. It was a big, black thing with a fur-trimmed hood and it concealed his holster nicely. This time he wasn’t screwing around. He was going to find the person responsible.

The paper, as it turned out, didn’t lead to an address, but rather to a stretch of land under one of the overpasses on the west end. The Sinkhole, it had been dubbed. The concrete river, a long stretch of inset land that ran under the city’s major crossing, was for catching storm runoff to prevent flooding, but it was mostly a place where the homeless loitered and punks graffitied the walls.

It was oddly quiet for mid afternoon. There was no one around, not even an alien Rick or a stray Morty begging for change. A sense of dread befell the officer. This wasn’t right.

He wandered down the path a ways, looking here and there for any signs of a trap door or some other means of entry. When he finally reached the shade of the overpass, he was even more perturbed by the nothingness. Yet, it was under the bridge that he at last saw something.

On the other side, where broken down cardboard boxes alerted the cop that someone had been here _once_ , there was some kind of strange garbage littered on the ground. It was bulky, discarded embryo sack from a Plactorn Morty perhaps?    

But, as he closed the distance, he realized it wasn’t alien at all. The bright red, still bloody intestines were very much human and strewn into a repulsive, cartoonish heart. Morty’s face crinkled with disgust. Was this some kind of joke?

“I was worried it’d be baked in by the time you got here, but the color is still pretty good, right?”

Morty, in one fluid motion, slipped his hand beneath his coat, unfastened his holster, retrieved his gun, and swung it around to face the voice.  

There he was, the scarred Rick, leaning against a support beam. Morty could see in this light that he was sallow, more pale and off-color than most Ricks, and the eyebags hadn’t been a trick of the light. They were deep like bruises and spoke of a body that knew very little rest. Despite his visage, he seemed quite pleased with himself.

“I would have made you something more ornate, but I was on a tight deadline.”

Morty kept his gun steady. “What the hell is this? Did you hurt someone?”

“No,” the Rick snickered. “I just made a little chaos. Now put down the gun. We should chat. After all, I’ve been waiting for you.”


	4. Code Eight

Rick hadn’t thought after his experience at the Creepy Morty that he’d ever be the same again. For a Rick, he’d known he had a fairly upbeat outlook. He could have admitted he was naive, he just hadn’t realized how much. In the wake of that incident, he’d began to wonder if perhaps that toxicity, that jaded ache that had taken hold of him, had stemmed from the interaction between Ricks and Mortys. That it did for all Ricks. Maybe they weren’t meant to be, just doomed to be. Forever locked in a cycle of self-loathing and destruction.

Yet hating Rookie had been impossible and eventually dislike too gave way. In the end, perhaps he’d just been drawn into that inevitability again. He just hoped that wasn’t the case.

So it pained him on a level he couldn’t properly process to see Morty this way. It was strange and had been for days. Morty was almost skittish, more like his replicas than the fierce, abrasive, curious boy Rick had come to know. He wasn’t talking much, and he seemed to carry out his duties in a deeply resigned way.

Rick had tried talking about it. Tried offering that ride home enough times to make him feel like a creep, but Morty just wasn’t himself. Something was wrong. The cop wondered if it was him. He had been so cold after putting in that call and had been flippant about Morty’s concerns. He just knew that his partner couldn’t afford to be as naive as he had been. They had to stay in their lane, or else risk a worse fate.

Unfortunately, he had no way of knowing that Morty’s true despair was buried in what had happened just days before.

~~~

“What the hell makes you think I’m going to give up my gun?” Morty had hissed in reply to the scarred Rick’s presumptuous demand.

“I guess you don’t have to, but it isn’t very civil,” the Rick’d said with a shrug.

“You’re the one aren’t you? The murderer that’s been leaving all those bodies.” Morty had kept his arm and voice steady, but he had no idea what he’d just walked into and his body was rigid with nerves.

“Yes, and I wanted to thank you for being among the few to see my art isn’t senseless.”

Morty had been stunned. He hadn’t been expecting a confession, and certainly not one given so flippantly. His lips had quivered. “What are you talking about? Of course it’s senseless! Why are you just standing there? Give me one reason I shouldn’t shoot you right now.”

“I can give you a few. For starters, you really don’t want to for your sake. If you kill me, which by all means you could, my followers will find and kill you. It’s not a threat, just an unfortunate fact. Those that follow my word are rather attached, and they wouldn’t take kindly to anything happening to me.”

“How do I know anyone would really care? How would they even know it was me?”

“How do think you ended up here?” Rick had snickered. “Remember the informant? He was mine.”

Morty’s hand had shook on the side of his gun. He knew better than to ride the trigger, but he’d been tempted to reach for it. “I’m taking you in.”

“Okay, but same problem. You die.” The Rick had smiled and stepped closer. “I’d rather this not end that way. You’ve been _really_ interesting.”

“Don’t come any closer! What did you mean about the informant?”

Rick could either see that Morty’s curiosity was too great to risk shooting the killer or he didn’t care if the cop did fire, because he had then strolled closer, pressed his chest right up to the barrel so he was standing just a foot from Morty. “I hired him. I’ve been watching you. I saw you that first night, at my little art exhibit. I liked the way you looked at my work. I liked the visceral reaction, the wonder in your eyes. Yeah, I was pretty into it.”

“Back the fuck up,” Morty had growled.

“I could disarm you, you know. But I can tell it comforts you and I want you to be comfortable.”

“So you–you set me up? The whole thing? Why?” Morty had struggled to balance the severity of the situation and the words he had heard.

The Rick had shrugged. “For a laugh at first. But then, at the club, I liked your attitude. You didn’t have that blank, faraway expression most get when they listen to me, but you didn’t start blowing me off, telling me to fuck off like that greasy fella.”

“So what? I gave you a little something different and you come to offer me threats? Organ arts and crafts?”

“Y-yeah in retrospect it’s a little sloppy, but I wanted you to see that I liked you. Anyway, I’m offering more than that, Morty. I’m offering you the opportunity to create a little chaos.”

“Drop the cryptic bullshit. I’m taking you in.”

Rick had rolled his eyes and, before Morty could react, the other man had grabbed his arm. The killer had gripped his wrist so hard Morty’s fingers flexed and the gun fell free. Rick had grabbed it out of the air in that instant and, in the next, spun Morty around so his back was pressed firm to Rick’s chest. The taller man had then taken hold of the cop’s chin, cradled it, and stroked the young man’s cheek with his thumb. “See? I know it’s surprising, b-but you’d be marveled by what a Rick can do when he’s sober.”

Morty’s back had tensed and he’d only been able to stand there horrified, body held in place by the hand against his face and the elbow pressed to his sternum. The embrace had been almost intimate and that made Morty all the more uneasy.

“I’ve heard a lot about you. I’ve had people watching you. I think you might be able to appreciate what I can do.”

“You’re a murderer,” Morty had spat.

“So is your partner. Let’s not get tied up in semantics. I’m talking about evolution here. Oh, but damn, listen to me just going on and–just rambling exposition. Introductions! I got excited and skipped the introductions. Forgive my rudeness. They call me Cannibal, it’s a little on-the-nose, but I never would burden my brethren with the assumption that wit is their strong suit.”

The name had created an instant sort of churning in Morty. A sick realization had come down hard and the pressure at his back had suddenly felt much more dangerous. “You–you a-a-a–oh god.”

“Waste none, want none,” Cannibal had chuckled mirthfully. Then he had unexpectedly let go, allowed Morty to turn and face him. He had put the gun in his belt to keep the cop from getting trigger happy.

“You’ve been toying with me. You lured me to the club, had me beaten? Now I’m here. Are you going to kill me?” Morty’s only security had come from the hope that he could run.

Cannibal’s smile had fallen. “The beat down wasn’t me, but I heard about it. Poor thing. No, I’m not just tormenting you. To be honest, I’d almost given up on you entirely. I was thrilled you went snooping around to find me. It confirmed what I already knew, that you were enraptured by my work. Fascinated. You just couldn’t let it go.” Cannibal had begun to stalk, to circle around Morty like a shark. “I stopped playing for a while to see if you would still look for me, catch on that those idiots couldn’t be me. When you didn’t come I worried we weren’t on the same wavelength after all. But I saw you at the site of my most recent and then you found my note. I thought I’d give you one more chance.”

Morty had been made mortified. This man–this monster–had been at every crime scene, had supposedly staged every step of Morty’s investigation, had men following cops for weeks without anyone noticing. How was that even possible?

“People are easy,” Cannibal had said, as if reading the rookie’s mind. “But connection is hard. I see something kindred in you, Morty. But let’s find out for sure.”

Morty had followed the killer’s path round and round, not wanting to turn his back to the man again. So they were face to face when Cannibal had closed the distance between them again, at least enough to run his hand down the cop’s face.

The contact had been warm and gentle, and the sensation it had sent through Morty had reminded him of that feeling the first night after the scene, that unholy sensation of fascination, longing, and disgust. He had sneered and tugged his face away.

Cannibal had merely laughed again. “So jumpy. Don’t worry I won’t bite. No matter how delicious you look.” The words had come forth hungry in a way the rookie was all too familiar with despite never having heard such a sound before. “No, here’s the deal. I’m going to go up the hill and disappear. Then you can go home. If you want to turn me in, call me. I’ll do it myself.” Cannibal had then pulled a slip of paper from his slacks and held it out.

Morty had taken it with a baffled expression on his face.

“But if you do, turn me in that is, it ends. Life goes on, locked in stagnant ego and endless turmoil, with nothing new to say. And you die. I’ll go to jail, but my people will kill you. Or!” The man’s expression had turned devious. “Or you wait. And I’ll show you why I do what I do. You’ll join me.”

“I won’t! I don’t know what you think of me–“

“We’ll see,” Cannibal had interjected. “We’ll see.”

~~~

After the Rick had gone, Morty knew he’d had no other choice but to return home. Despite his new knowledge–that this man had been watching him–for the first time in a month, Morty knew he wasn’t being followed.

Morty had left the curtains drawn when he’d gotten home. For the rest of the evening, that night, and many nights that followed, Morty had been left alone with a crushing ultimatum.

In all the films Morty had ever seen, when the hero was faced with an impossible task, Morty had always fancied he knew the right answer. Self sacrifice was easy in an abstract sense, when held up against a greater good. Yet, in practice, he found himself less the Superman and more a rat in a maze. He was helplessly scratching at the walls, hoping to escape both the shock for not finding the cheese and the very real reality of the trap he was in. But there was no escape, no clambering out. He could run the maze or take the shock.

Of course, Morty didn’t feel right equating his life or the lives of others to cheese and the shock was so great it became more difficult to determine which side of the coin was which.

On top of the terror, there sat another feeling, the whisper of the devil in his ear. The very curiosity that had led him into this, the desire to experience. _What will this be like? What happens when you don’t turn him in?_ It whispered.

When. There was no if, it seemed. Survival instinct is more powerful than empathy in the strongest soul. Giving up his own life was a choice he didn’t have the wherewithal to make, not now, when his life was just beginning to feel like his own.

So he sat, stewing in his own self-loathing and despicable intrigue as he waited for the next blow to come.

He became flighty, almost certain in some way that this was some cosmic test he was failing, but he didn’t want to die. He looked at everyone with a hint of doubt and worried he was carrying his dark knowledge on his sleeve. He didn’t know what he was hoping for. There was no solution to this. Longed as he did to trust his partner, he knew Cannibal hadn’t lied. The truth would free him from his body and the force could do nothing to protect him, and Rick, despite his apologies, had made it clear he didn’t want his ass on the line for Morty’s mistakes. The rookie had to make a decision alone and reap the consequences the same.

Whether for better or worse, the choice was taken out of his hands a few days later.

Morty was on his way home one morning when he got the call. His cell phone rang out and he glanced at it, unfamiliar with the number on the screen. “Hello?’ he asked timidly upon picking up.

“I can see your life means something to you. Meet me at the underpass as soon as you can. Come alone.” Then the call cut out.

Morty shivered as he looked down at the device in his hand. It was almost like a loaded gun, poised to send a bullet through him should he choose to call for help. He’d waited too long and now that psycho wanted to meet again.

“I’ll just kill him myself,” he muttered, but he knew it was a lie as soon as it left his lips. A man like this had allies, probably those more than willing to carry out a hit. Yet, somehow he felt, if he were earnest, it would be the best thing he could do. What would the force do with such a maniac, after all? Cannibal was better off in the ground, because Morty seriously doubted he’d ever be held in a cage.

Still, being of little choice, he moved toward the destination, knowing full well he wouldn’t be killing anyone that night.

The overpass was more peaceful and ominous in darkness. It glittered under streetlights, the bridge an arch to heaven’s stars, but down below it cast a shadow darker than the rest of the night on the The Sinkhole. It looked like an inky black abyss just down a concrete slide, but Morty submerged himself anyway.

He held himself with arms tucked into his coat to fight the night chill and to guard against the shudders of bleak fear running down his spine.

He could see very little when he walked beneath the bridge and the darkness become consuming. Then a figure emerged with his cell phone lit up. Cannibal smiled in the eerie glow, but that sight wasn’t what made Morty’s stomach drop. Just behind the killer was the strained and horrified face of a captured Rick, cloth gag in his mouth. He was seated in a chair or other holding, judging by his height, but Morty couldn’t make out the details.  

“Tonight is your second test. I think you’ll do better,” Cannibal all but purred. He strolled up, unaffected by Morty’s shock, and wrapped his arm around the cop like they were old companions. The weight of him remind Morty of Twinkie, leaning against him with unwelcome familiarity. Yet unlike that, this felt gentle, somehow coxing rather than threatening, which was too tremendously odd for Morty to properly calculate. He’d always been good at reading people’s intentions on a sort of subconscious level, but because it came so naturally it could be so easily sullied by his emotions, and that made it impossible to always trust his instincts.

“What do you want?” Morty said tersely.

“I want you to watch and listen,” Cannibal said as he led Morty close to the bound man. In the direct light of the cell’s flashlight the cop could better see the captive was nude, tied down by ropes to a sturdy wooden chair. The man’s eyes were bulging, his expression having moved from rage to pleading some time ago.

Cannibal handed Morty the phone so he could keep the light on the captive. The cop’s heart began to thud. He couldn’t let this happen, but he didn’t know what to do. He was in a lion’s den and, though the beast was calm, his teeth were sharp.

“All Ricks are scared, when you get right down to it,” Cannibal began as he skirted behind the chair and placed a hand on the other Rick’s head to ruffle his blue-gray hair. “Most of them just can’t admit it.”

“Even you?” Morty asked, pleased that he kept his words steady even as his tone trembled.

“Especially me,” Cannibal said softly. “I am petrified of going through this world entirely alone, forced to watch myself in a thousand lives commit the same mistakes over and over again. Doomed to watch our stage play come apart at the curtains and fall down to crush everyone in the way. Our way of life is not sustainable!” His voice began to rise, but he seemed to catch himself and returned to his calm demeanor. “And our way of seeing things is fake. The structure which puts you over me. Well…” At this he smiled. “The structure that puts men on your level above me. It’s a farce. You perhaps are cleaner in a sense, Morty. But the Ricks are all the same. The police are corrupt. Everyone is just playing pretend and no one ever really gets justice.”

“Your ideology seems to be all over the place,” Morty said with a bit of bite. “Corruption doesn’t end corruption.”

“No. No it does not. But at least I’m not pretending. I embrace chaos, destruction. I deny the singular goal. You may not see it yet, but I want to help. Do you see this Rick?” At last, Cannibal turned his attention back to the man he was still idley stroking. “He killed his Morty. No good reason. He was just sick of him.”

The captive shook his head frantically and his eyes began to water. Morty felt his heart picking up speed.

“Oh, yes, yes you did. Sing it up to be an accident all you want. You don’t accidently choke your grandson to death. You were sick of the sound of his voice. Admit it.” Cannibal pulled a knife from his pocket and flicked it open. He pressed the sharp and shimmering blade to the other man’s neck.

The captive whined like a dog being kicked.

“That’s enough! I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but I’m not going to let you hurt this man. If he did what you said, he can stand trial for it,” Morty said frantically.

“Why? There is no capital punishment for the death of a Morty. You know that, don’t you? The judge will never call it anything but an accident, and this fuck’ll be let off with a slap on the wrist. Besides, given the chance he’d do it again. Listen.” Cannibal leaned forward, his spine curved like the body of a snake, and he ungagged the captive Rick. “Admit you killed that boy and I won’t cut your throat. I just want to prove a point.”

“I-I didn’t! I mean, it was an accident! It was!” The Rick said frantically. His eyes were wide, bulging. Gazing into Morty in search of mercy, in search of help. Desperation. Morty had seen it in the corpse in the field. It sent a jolt of adrenaline through him. He didn’t want to admit what it felt like, but thankfully true mercy was Morty’s greatest virtue, and his pity and fear for the man won out. At first.

“I-I don’t know what I can do,” Morty admitted. He hated it, how Cannibal smiled so sweetly at him when he said it. “You have to stop this, Rick or C-Cannibal or whatever you want to be called! This isn’t right.”

“Tell him the truth. It’s the only way I don’t flay your skin,” Cannibal hissed.

Morty could see the sweat on the man’s face even in the cheap blueish cellphone light. The rookie watched each flinch, each shift in expression with bated breath as the man made his decision.

“Fine,” he whispered.

“Fine?” Cannibal cocked his head and pressed the blade hard enough to draw a sliver of red over the metal’s surface.

“Fine! I did it! I killed him! I-I hadn’t fucking meant to, but he–jesus christ–he wouldn’t stop bitching! Always blaming me for everything! Being so useless! You’re _all_ useless!” He was shouting now, but the concrete river threw most of the sound back at them without letting it escape. He was leering at Morty, making the cop recoil as if afraid he’d lunged forward and take him out next.

Morty felt repulsion settle in his gut. A sickly sweet mingling of anger and pity, of apologeticness and hatred, stirred inside. Each emotion struggled to distinguish itself from his last. This Rick was no better than a criminal himself. Another Morty dead. Another piece of Rookie’s self shattered for the crime of being inconvenient.     

“I just wanted him to shut up,” the Rick continued, all but spitting and laughing now. “I just wanted him to shut the fuck up f-for–One. Fucking! Minu–”

His words ended on the sound of a small explosion. A brief, eruptive pop and the wet slap of blood against skin. Morty had to blink rapidly a few times to understand and to rid the spackles of human fluid from his lashes.

Cannibal had quieted the other man with a silenced gunshot to the head. The bullet had passed through the skull and gone into the corpse’s lap from the angle of the gun. The scarred man hadn’t wanted to hurt his audience after all.

The dead Rick now lay slumped, eyes still wide with hysterics, mouth slack, forehead blown out with fragments of bone and visceral, cerebral fluid dripping from the wound. Blood splatter had rained out over his legs, over the concrete. It had sprayed across Morty’s face and coat. With a trembling arm, he wiped the mess from his face, or rather tried but only managed to smear it.

Cannibal held up the gun. Morty’s, the one he’d stolen. “I could see you wanted _him_ to stop talking.”    

Morty tried to process what was going on. This was all a big taunt, a trap. Yet, if anger was the point Cannibal was trying to evoke, the words had almost worked. He’d begun to boil, fists clenching, threatening to crack the phone, just before the bullet had cracked skull. Morty had almost wanted him to die, but now that he was dead, Morty thought he might be sick. The contents of his stomach barely stayed in tact. “You k-killed him, Rick.”

“Yes and no. I mean, I did. But no one would know that. If they find the body and the gun, they’ll think it was you.”

The reality had set in before Cannibal had even spoke. _A trap,_ Morty thought. _He’s got me._

“Now, if you walk away, you won’t just die. You’ll die a murderer. I hate having to set the board up like this, because I want you to like me. But I do need my assurance.” Cannibal’s voice was casual as he slid the gun into a plastic bag. He slipped it in under his belt, then, with the knife in his other hand, he cut a long sliver up the corpse’s arm. He placed the skin on his tongue, a sight so grotesque it made the young cop gag. Then he swallowed the piece whole, once more reminding one of a snake, merciless in devouring a meal. “I break him down to rebuild myself,” Cannibal said as he licked blood from his lips. When he was done, he moved over to the younger man.

Morty was shaking, with no control over his limbs. None of this was what he’d come to the Citadel for. He wanted to help people, yet he’d just watched a man die under his own gun, then witnessed the killer ingest the victim.

Cannibal’s voice was soothing. “Shh, I know it’s upsetting.” He all but cooed as he pulled out a handkerchief and began to wipe the blood from Morty’s face. “I know this is a lot and it’s probably not winning you over very much. I’ve been giving you a lot of double talk, I know that. I have a sort of gift for gab. But I don’t want to you to come out of this more afraid of me. I want you to see that I want what you want. You became a cop to help people, didn’t you?”

Morty felt a cold apathy spreading through him, a dissonance to cushion what he’d seen. “Yes,” he whispered. All he could feel and see in that moment was Cannibal, his outline in the dark. Morty had dropped the phone at some point. _After the blood, before the cloth,_ he thought vaguely. The gentle hands on his face felt comforting, the cloth wiping away the blood was cleansing, soft. Much nicer than the fear and anger he had felt seconds before.

“This world won’t let you do it. You have to upset the balance. Take matters into your own hands. Make this world a better place. Building comes from destroying.” Cannibal repeated the words from that first night. “Burn something down, so something else can grow.”

Morty’s brows wove. “I don’t want to be part of this.”

Cannibal Rick smiled, and the shadows made the dark rings of his eyes appear like hollows. “Well, you’re fucked now anyway. Might as well enjoy it.”

Somehow Morty knew it wasn’t really a choice.


	5. Reality Challenged

There is a haziness that follows people when they sleep, a sort of smog that rests at the edges of the vision that at times is undetectable, but upon waking is always there. It separates that mental realm from reality. 

Morty kept looking for that haze, that wisp of a promise that none of this was real, but each morning he woke and the memories remained. No fog would come to mercifully obscure his view.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world continued on in its monotonous fashion. Unperturbed by the rookie’s internal struggle, the departments continued to do their work to less than admirable quality. Drug trades still went down in the locker rooms, right out in the open.

The next time Morty walked in on one, he didn’t bother confronting the situation. He went straight to management.

“I’ll give him a warning,” said the commissioner, without ever looking up from his paperwork.

“A warning?” Morty replied aghast. “Sir, I don’t think you understand–“

The commissioner’s eyes flitted upward then and fixed Morty with a hard stare. “Rookie, what I understand is how many years Twinkie has put into this force. He’s a good officer. I’ll issue the warning, but if I hear any more of this you’re suspended, do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir.” Morty understood that no one gave a shit what he thought or what was right. The commissioner just saw him as a whiny child, come to complain. That interaction was, perhaps, the one that turned him from frightened to hollow. 

The next days passed in a ritual cycle. Clock in, work, clock out. Morty felt disconnected, surrounded by people but stranded alone. No one could help him. No one wanted to. Hatred and bitterness filled in the dark hole of depression that had taken seed in him since the night he’d washed brain off his clothes.

_ He’s right, they’re corrupt. It’s all an act. Look at these machines, this station, the way the criminals are handled. Farce. It’s a fucking farce. _

He tried to push those thoughts down, conceal them under his better nature. He couldn’t think that way, and yet the patterns began to emerge and Morty wanted so badly to shatter them.

Too contained in his own loathing, Morty overlooked the one other person in his life that wanted things to be better too.

“Come eat dinner with me,” Rick said, impromptu one night. He set down a dark blue fabric cooler, heavy enough it thudded against Morty’s desk.

“Not hungry,” Morty said curtly, though he looked the cooler up and down with a mingling of frustration and tepid hope.

“Bullshit. You haven’t eaten dinner in days. You’re throwing off your schedule. Besides, I told you a while back that I owe you. I cooked it and everything. Pasta prema–some shit. It’s supposed to be, like, really l-light or some—“

“I’m just not hungry!” Morty barked. He hadn’t meant to come across aggressive, but guilt was bubbling up under his apathetic band aid and threatening to unleash more emotions from the wound. He just wanted everything to be quiet and simple. He just wanted to play his part.  _ Stop getting invested, _ his head pleaded.

“Okay, What the fuck?” Rick slammed his hand down on the table over the paper Morty was pretending to read. “First, you spend days skittish like you stole money from your mama's purse, then you’re distant, look like you’ve barely slept, now you’re ice cold. You don’t talk. Your pulling guns on soft offenders. You won’t even eat with me. What’s going on with you?”

Morty’s brows wove in annoyance, but inside he felt another painful spike of guilt. He had gotten a bit overzealous on certain runs lately. His patience had been thin and gangsters and druggies responded better to questioning when they were staring down the barrel of a standard issue, it was just a fact. Though his weapon itch was driven, perhaps, by his lack of sleep. He was barely getting two hours a night, too haunted by what might be impending to rest properly. 

Even still, he didn’t want a lecture. Still worse, he didn’t want Rick to notice, didn’t want him to care. It reminded him more and more that he was harboring a secret that thoroughly undid any good he ever hoped to do. And Rick, Morty believed, was mostly good. “What does it matter? It’s nothing, it’s none of your business!”

“I’m your partner, Morty, and this is messing with you. I hate it. Please, talk to me.”

Rick looked so caring, his expression gentle, eyes concerned. It made Morty almost ill. The man’s hand was still pressed to the desk, just inches from Morty’s. Morty wondered if his skin was soft, if his fingers were as gentle as his voice. The rookie started to imagine those fingers on his cheek, skating the surface, cool and comforting. Cool in contrast to Morty’s oft warm flesh, rather than warm on their own, combining with him to be too hot, singeing like the touch and promise of a demon.

The rookie shuddered. “I don’t want to talk. I have nothing to say.”

The eyes gazing down at him glazed, the features set stony, unreadable. “Fine. Forget it.” Rick took his cooler and left. Morty watched him walk away and refused to allow himself to feel anything about it.

He was grateful to leave the station when his shift was up. It was getting colder as the weather shifted and, as he started his walk, the first hints of rain began to fall. He pulled up his hood and pondered with a sort of jadedness if the weather was fake as well. Did this place have its own climate or was it automated? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

He hadn’t made it very far from the station when he detected he wasn’t alone. He could hear soft footfalls just behind him, could feel eyes leering at the back of his head. Subtly, he slipped his hand into his slacks and pulled out the pocket knife he kept there. It was freshly sharpened just in case. He had kept one on him since he’d been attacked. He wanted to be ready this time, he had no intention of being caught off guard.

The pursuer waited until Morty was in front of an alleyway, and then he made his move. He broke into a run and lunged forward, pushing Morty into the narrow confines. Then he hissed, “I warned you to lay low, you little fuck. This is from Ruby-Eye.” He had Morty by the scruff of his coat and the cloaked man reared back his fist and brought it down hard against his victim’s face.

Morty was ready this time. He braced for the blow and moved through the ringing in his ears. When the Rick was recovering from landing his hit, Morty took that split second to catch the man off balance. Morty brought one arm over his attacker’s and slammed down hard so the bastard lost his hold. 

The older man staggered, slumping forward to cradle his hurt arm. “You little–”

Then, with knife clasped harmlessly upward between his hands, Morty brought his fists down as one against the cloaked man’s shoulder to knock him to his knees.

The attacker hit the ground, but he didn’t give up. He brought his good arm up hard to slam Morty in the gut. Pain ran in vibrations through the rookie’s organs, and he heaved before stumbling back against the brick wall of the alley. The surface was slimy as rain began to slicken the world. A light drizzle intensified, and the roar of the wind covered the sound of his rapid breathing.

Morty glared down and saw the man crawling toward him, struggling to his feet, and the cop kicked outward to connect with the Rick’s jaw.

The man yelled from the impact, his head tossed back to reveal the long stretch of his neck. His hood blew back from the motion to expose both uniquely short hair and the blue collar of the uniform below.

Morty knew this man from his own department. FlatTop was his nomer. He’d been with the station a long time. He had coffee with the commissioner twice a week. And now he was rushing at Morty, growling as he slammed headlong against the smaller man and brought a fist hard against his ear.

Morty fumbled, his vision blurred, ears rung. He could hear the squeal of steel against stone as his knife cut at the wall while his fingers clasped it for support. 

“You’re a fucking tool, you little shit. Shoulda-should’ve stayed in your own damn lane!”

Morty wasn’t thinking clearly. The words coming from this man, this officer, sounded like they were under water, and not just because of the rain soaking them, drenching Morty’s skin and hair. He was just angry, listening to the burbled threats, seeing red over blue against black in this damned alley in a city that had no business reeking so heavily of trash and sin.  _ Fucking geniuses. No, fucking pathetic.  _

They exchanged a few blows then, punch for punch, but Morty wasn’t feeling them. He was no longer aware of his specific acts as his body moved on reflex. He was only acutely aware when FlatTop gripped one of his wrists hard enough to bruise. Only faintly present as his own animalistic scream was drowned out by the harsh overhead crack of angry thunder. Only the tiniest bit privy to his own desires as his free hand swung back and brought his knife into the Rick’s side to pass between ribs and dig deep enough to puncture lungs.

His thoughts became only splintered fragments, chanted to the beat of the sickening thunk of steel driving into meat over and over. Sticky blood and fluid water danced over his fingers. Little rivers, like veins, formed over the back of his palm and carried the crimson wash from source to the ground.

The Rick’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, his lips quivered, his body hit the pavement. Morty crawled over it, straddled it, and brought the knife down again and again. He liked how easily the weapon slipped inside, how beautifully the red rose bloomed across the dark blue of the rain-wet uniform. Corrupt cop, tainted by the stain of his crime. Poetic probably, if Morty was of the state to admire it.

A bolt of lightning lit up the dark alcove of the alley, illuminated the pale face, parted lips, listless eyes. The punctures in cloth and flesh leered up at their creator, and, in this flash, Morty could finally see. His arms fell slack at his sides, he let the knife clatter to the ground. His chest heaved over and over as he struggled for breath, his throat was raw though he’d never heard his own voice.

_ What have you done? _ His mind clicked back on as if a switch had been flipped. He couldn’t tell if it was just the rain or his own despair, but his eyes burned. He looked down again and gasped at the corpse below him. He recoiled, stumbling back so hard his ass hit the ground and his legs bent up to push him further away. He scrambled to the edge of the alley on his back and tried not to scream. 

“What did I do?” he muttered hoarsely. “Oh, god!”

He fell backwards so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. He gazed up at the gray sky and the murky clouds overhead. The rain was pouring. He shivered under the icy onslaught but prayed he might drown or else be washed away to the gutter. 

Eventually, he compartmentalized enough to stand on quivering legs. The body was still there, a mass of actualization, the victim of a poison that had been swimming in Morty for ages, but had only recently taken shape. 

He fumbled for his cellphone. It was wet but still worked. He thought about Rick, about the rejected lunch, the offers for help. But then he remembered the commissioner, Twinkie, the names he’d been called, and every assumption that had ever been made about him. He scrolled down the numbers to the most recently added.

He’d told himself he’d only put it there so he wouldn’t be caught off guard. So if he turned the man in there would be a way to find him. In a way, he had known it was a lie, but he’d never imagined this. 

The next moment the sound of ringing was at his ear, then a tone that was so comforting in its smoothness that Morty did start to cry. “Hey, didn’t think you were gonna call.”

“A-are you n-nearby?” Morty’s whole being was trembling, he had his arms wrapped around himself as he spoke into the phone. He couldn’t take his eyes off the body.

The flirtation in Cannibal’s voice was replaced by concern. “No, but I can be. What’s wrong?”

“I killed someone,” Morty shrieked. “I-I killed him!”

“Stay calm. I’ll be right there.”

Cannibal didn’t ask for an address, he just hung up. Morty pressed his back to the wall to keep from tumbling back to the ground. The more it rained, the more the blood seeped into the grit of the pavement. The color sprawled out like tendrils reaching in every direction.

Cannibal arrived in a dark red car and didn’t speak. Rather than his usual garbs, he wore a pin-striped shirt beneath a black suit, all cloaked under a black shoulder coat, as if he’d been in some meeting. It made him look more composed than usual, more disciplined. He gestured Morty into the vehicle then set about moving the body into the trunk. He called someone, but Morty wasn’t paying attention anymore. 

The inside of the car was warm and the dry leather seat slid under him in a reminder of how drenched he was. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror and could see how broken he looked. His brown curls were glued to his forehead in messy waves, his skin was pale from the cold, and his eyes had bags nearly as dark as Cannibal’s. Morty suddenly thought he understood the man just a little.

They drove for a half hour and came up to a hill in the underdeveloped area of the Citadel. “Come with me,” Cannibal said.

Before too long, Morty was standing over a hole that plunged deep in the wet dirt. His hands throbbed from the shovel, but his fingers were too numb to care. His coat, jacket, and hat waited in the car, so he was left shivering in his blood-dappled blue shirt, but he might as well have been naked. 

                                                                         

He watched as Cannibal chucked the body unceremoniously into the hole. It hit the ground with a heavy thud that made Morty flinch. He was wringing his hands, shuddering, the picture of a cowardice Morty.

Cannibal held out a laser the size of a pen to the cop. “Here. Don’t be scared. My first time was an accident too.”

That should have been more frightening, but as he took the laser and his hand brushed Rick’s steady one, he found himself comforted enough to still. “Don’t you usually eat them?”

“Yes and you will too, but not this one. This is your initiation. The next one, the one you take with purpose, will be your first taste.”

Morty just nodded. This was it. It was over. This was the path he’d chosen and there wasn’t any going back. Problems could not be fixed, only destroyed. He pointed the laser downward and unleashed the pointed blast. It caught the body alight at once. The flames flickered and burned even in the lingering drizzle. Orange and red roared across the surface of muddied blue and morbid gray.

The smell was almost sickly, like overcooked meat. To Cannibal that was precisely what it was. The sight of it began to soothe Morty’s shaken nerves. “He should have left me alone,” the rookie whispered.

Morty didn’t flinch when Cannibal’s hand retrieved the laser, then returned to wrap around his own. Their fingers laced, and Morty let himself be tugged by the hip so he was no longer gazing into the flames of his own downfall, but instead into the eyes of his own personal devil.

“You don’t have to hate it or fear it. I can see how beautiful you know it is. I know how good it must have felt, how freeing. You unleashed your anger. No more pretending.”

Morty loved how Cannibal looked at him, so tender and hopeful. He loved feeling admired, like he’d finally done something right. He liked not having to wonder if this Rick wanted him. He could _ see _ it. Then he could taste it. 

Morty didn’t know if it was he or Cannibal that closed the distance, it didn’t matter. Their lips pressed softly, skin clinging to skin, living cells flushing with blood and radiating with existence. Pressed together, even the water collected on their clothes was no match for the heat. They lit each other up, arms entwining, mouths exploring, friction chest to chest as they stood above the flicker of burning flesh six feet below. The all consuming flame of hell.

 


	6. Street Justice

It wasn’t long before Morty heard from Cannibal again. The truly shocking thing was that Morty felt neither frightened nor despairing. The kiss at the hidden grave had been enough to seal his confidence. Morty, after all, didn’t do anything halfway. This was what he’d chosen and for the time he was unconcerned. He didn’t think anyone would find the body and, even if they dug it up somehow, there would be no tying it back. 

He had only killed a criminal anyway. The way he saw it, one less scourge on the force. Deep down there still rested some guilt, but he couldn’t afford it. It only reared late at night or when he had to be around his partner for too long. As a result, he wisely allowed the distance that had grown between them to remain. However, his civilities returned to normal. No more gun swinging nonsense from the rookie.

Though it only took a few days, he was grateful when Cannibal called. Morty went to the club that was instructed and got in without a word having to be spoken.

A heavily pierced Rick led him past the dancers and downstairs to the basement. Cannibal seemed to have a thing for red, because the whole place was tinted with colored lights and satin furnishings to match. It was more lavish than the coffee joint, and Morty didn’t have to be told to know it was because Cannibal owned this one himself. 

He was waiting there on a plush silk red rug, surrounded by followers. When Morty arrived, Cannibal waved him over excitedly. On the walk over Morty saw that beyond the decor there was little difference from one house of sin to the next. The couches were full of drug-adled users and folks getting handsy. The major difference was the lack of music. Instead of booming rock, the air was filled with moaning as people unabashedly fucked out in the open. Morty felt himself blushing but didn’t overact for fear of bringing unwanted attention to himself. He hurried to Cannibal’s side and knelt down on the soft rug.

“I’m glad you were able to come, Morty. These are my followers. I told them about you and they are eager to see you provide examples of the sort of freedom they can look forward to.”

“E-example? I’m not even sure what we’re doing here.” 

“I promised that you’d get your first taste. I intend to uphold that. You’ve peeked into our world, but it’s time to come inside. Of course, only if you’re certain this is what you want.”

The others were seated further back now, shuffled out of reach to give their leader and his apprentice space. They smiled and watched with wide eyes like owls, surveying the ground in search of prey. Or perhaps they were just waiting to see his reaction.

Morty knew what was being asked of him. As he thought of the blood trickling down the back of his hand, the warm and soothing rush of it, he knew he wanted another taste. Even as that revelation still repulsed a better part of him, he nodded his consent.

“I need you to say that you are ready.”

“Yes,” Morty whispered and the crowd murmured in awe.

“Bring in the offender!” Cannibal’s voice could be so booming, even in a noisy space.

Moments later, the tattooed Rick and an Exo-Alpha Rick brought out a third of their kind, this one looked somewhat normal save for his savvy business suit, the gag down his throat, and the rope binding his hands behind his back.

“Rick here likes human trafficking. Not Ricks or Mortys specifically, just anyone he can get his filthy hands on. His favorite pastime is strangling hookers.”

The followers pushed the bound Rick to his knees on the carpet between Cannibal and Morty so they could both reach him, but Cannibal moved anyway to kneel before his captive. Then he beckoned Morty over, instructed him to rid himself of his coat, and pulled the smaller small into his lap. Morty felt a strange twisting of emotions. The warmth at his back was welcoming and gentle. The eyes before him were full of pleading and anger.

“Let’s give him a taste of his own karma.” Cannibal’s hands drifted down Morty’s arms. Goosebumps raised below the exposed skin as the fingertips ghosted teasingly downward, until his hands took hold of the rookie’s.

Morty’s heart was racing in his chest and he let his hands be guided to the restrained man’s throat. The Rick tried to back away, but there were others at his back to keep him from disturbing the ritual. Once Morty’s hands were placed at the victim’s throat he constricted them himself, gasped at the surprisingly satisfying pressure of compressing flesh and muscle with his own hands.

Cannibal snickered, pleased by his protégé’s willingness, and pressed his hands hard to the back of Morty’s to reinforce the hold.

The gagged man’s face started to redden at once and Morty watched the shift of slowly morphing desperation with a child’s arrogant infatuation. 

Cannibal was familiar with it, eager to tame it. “That’s right. Don’t look away, don’t stop. You want to know what’s at the bottom of the darkness. That sensation of falling is terrifying, but that’s what makes it exciting. Don’t let yourself wake before you reach the end of the tunnel.”

Morty’s breath came in shuddering gasps, arousal and terror started to melt together in an intoxicating cocktail dripping down straight from his central cortex to his cock. The victim’s breath was ragged too, hiccuping, fighting to surge in or out, but unable to do either.

The Rick’s nostrils flared, his throat and face flushed in a cacophony of splotchy bursting capillaries. Morty could feel him pulsing, struggling, but the firm grip of two pairs of hands kept him constrained.

The cop felt like he was dreaming. The sort of airy dream with dark inclinations that make one’s stomach churn while their minds sing. Transgressive fiction, but Morty was wide awake.

Cannibal left Morty in charge to free his hands for roaming. They moved  with expert nimbleness to unfasten belt and the jagged metal teeth that opened to a mouth of cloth hot with the fullness of prick in place of tongue. Sallow fingers took virgin body in hand and rolled the ridges until it stood alert and drooling shameless pleasure.

Morty’s breath quickened further, his chest mirroring the erratic tremble of lungs straining for and sustaining of the most minute plumes of oxygen. His grip printed dark bruises, more evidence, each dark engraving a sign that there was no way back.

Saliva soaked the cloth gag. Bodies trembled and lashes fluttered.

“Stop,” Cannibal demanded. His fingers stilled to make clear his point and it left both men straining. 

Morty obeyed reluctantly and the Rick, seconds from losing consciousness began to gasp and choke around his gag and heaved needy breaths through his nose. 

The rookie looked at his hands. They were red and he could feel blood pulsing through the veins, the nerves burning from compression. He’d never known he possessed the strength to strangle a man.

“We can’t have him die or depart like this,” Cannibal hummed. His hands cluttered away like moths scurrying from the lamp post, but returned a moment later. One took hold of Morty’s stiff base, his fingers drew a moan from the cop’s lips, while the other hand offered a blade. 

This was no pocket knife. The blade was the sharpest Morty had ever seen and long enough to slice the length of a throat in a single slip. The handle was silver and engrained with intricate curves and symbols Morty understood where alien, but he lacked the capacity to read.

Cannibal gave it to Morty and muttered by way of explanation, “Momento mori, basically, but in Scarvonian. Looks cooler.”

“Makes sense.” 

_ That’s right. Everyone dies. _ Morty’s eyes widened as he looked down at the knife in his grip.  _ What the hell? I haven’t thought of that in so long. _ The fire in the church, the airships to safety, the screams in the darkness lamenting the words,  _ everyone dies _ . One hell of a childhood. Thinking of it then didn’t dissuade his resolve.

“You can choose where we take from.”

“I hear the cheek is sweet.” Morty was surprised by the huskiness of his own voice, how deep the undercurrent of desire rolled.

Cannibal laughed again and guided Morty’s hand up, but he didn’t have to make the cut. 

The knife was truly sharp and slid through the skin with the ease of slicing jello. Actually, Morty likened it more to slicing into a plum. Even the fruit below wasn’t unlike a red plum, the rubies and pinks underlined by veiny pulpits, the thinnest parts nearly translucent. 

But fruit didn’t scream, raw from the chest or otherwise. Fruit, at juiciest, did not drip the thick red river of a punctured human membrane. Morty savored the act of drawing the flesh away with his thumb to reveal the dark ridges of muscle stretched over bone. Everything was rigid and red, impossible to decipher one fiber from the next with his untrained eyes. It was just lines on a map and he had nowhere to go. He was blindly driving.

He liked the act more than the result. The extracted skin lacked dexterity, flexibility. Dead once peeled. It wasn’t appetizing, but the doting expression on Cannibal’s face was enough to coax Morty’s lips apart.

Morty slipped the pallet onto his tongue and cringed at the coppery twinge of it on his taste buds.

He had heard once that human was supposed to taste like ham, but somehow he had expected, in the etherealness of this ritual, that it would almost be sweet. It was neither. It tasted of salt and the satiny bitterness of running one’s tongue over a human surface, and blood. Mostly it tasted of blood.

He bit down once and was surprised by how thick and rubbery the meat was. The feel of it made him gag, but Cannibal’s palm covered his lips to keep it inside.

“Don’t chew. We’ll cook the rest, but the first bite you always swallow. Deconstruct and rebuild. Bring his wasted life into you so can make something of use.”

Morty’s eyes had begun to water from the wretched flavoring. Swallowing it was difficult because he’d cut the piece too thick, but, after his esophagus rejected it twice, he managed to choke it down. He panted heavily with relief when Cannibal released his face. A twinge of his wit told him this was insane, but when he tilted his head back, Cannibal’s obvious pleasure quieted the young man's doubt.

The victim had doubled over and was bent forward on his knees as he screeched out his pain behind his gag. Morty had ignored him after the cut, too preoccupied with the situation to pay any mind. Yet, now he noticed and was allured to find the sight brought as much amusement as pity. Perhaps more.

“He can feel his pitiful life collapsing. The first sliver of change. You’ve taken of him and made yourself more complete. Today, Morty, I put my trust in you completely. I give myself to you and ask for you in return so that we might build each other up.” Cannibal removed the blade smoothly from Morty’s lax grip.

The traitorous cop was suddenly very aware of his own exposed genitalia, and of the hard form pressing against his clothed ass. He watched as Cannibal brought his arm around and across Morty’s chest, not for the view of the people, but so Morty alone would see with absolute clarity.

The blade sunk into that arm, just a little, with the practiced tilt of the man that owned it. Cannibal, with nary a hiss, cut a small sliver from his forearm and didn’t seem to care when blood rolled from the wound to trickle down his arm and wet Morty’s shirt. 

Then he sliced the sliver of removed flesh in twane. With a steady hand he brought half to Morty’s lips. 

This time it almost was sweet, but really it was just the taboo that made his insides quiver with delight. He partook with relative ease and felt the bliss of it blush his cheeks and chest.

Cannibal swallowed the other half himself like it was no task at all. “We are of us and each other.”

Then Cannibal’s fingers toyed with the hem of the blue button-down Morty wore. The young man knew it was his turn. He shifted to better allow Cannibal access to the flesh of his hip.

The sting took a moment to catch up. The slice was so seamless that it was like nothing had happened at all. Then the feeling of fire rippled through the wound. It throbbed and burned, but still lacked the intensity he had expected. 

His breathing sped up as he looked down. The cut was minute, just enough to be substantial. Morty could see no winding sinew or suggestive pulp. The wound was red and bloody and wept to soak the hem of his pants. The tickle of the chilly blood rolling down the skin that remained made him squirm, and then gasp as Cannibal set down the knife and ran his fingers through the stream. He smeared the color over pale flesh and drew marked fingers to his lips. His motions coaxed Morty’s gaze. 

The older man curled his tongue around the digits and drew back with a satisfied sigh. Morty recalled film depictions of vampires, maws open and tainted ruby, eyes shining with wicked intent.

“So sweet,” Cannibal praised. Still holding his hand to his face. He uncurled his ring and pinkie fingers to reveal the small slab of meat. It looked, perhaps paler, smoother, but otherwise indiscernible from any piece the rookie had yet to see. Morty realised that was part of the point. “Your flesh to mine.”

Cannibal teasingly placed the piece between his teeth, flicked it with his tongue, before using surprisingly effective force to rip the skin in half. He swallowed his half with serene bliss marking his features. 

Morty was enraptured. Just before him, the prisoner was being held down for trying to flee, just behind, an audience stared in reverence, but to Morty it was all background. 

His vision was only broken when Cannibal took hold of his chin and gently turned him back to face forward, toward the object in the their ritual. Then, still gripping his jaw, Cannibal pressed the flesh to Morty’s lips. 

It was softer, younger, and as the rookie swallowed, returning to himself, Cannibal began to pump his prick once more. 

“Oh,” Morty groaned softly in both surprise and pleasure. 

Then both hands were on him and it was like nothing he’d ever felt. Bloodied fingers dragged over his ridges. It wasn’t slick like lubricant, but wet and sticky, like a subtle glue, so Cannibal’s fingers clung and rubbed with a fresh friction. Morty enjoyed it anyway and struggled to concentrate when Cannibal gave him his next instructions.

“Move over him and take the blade,” Cannibal whispered. Then his hands fled and Morty bucked against the air in wanting.

Even still, he whimpered as he moved. The followers guided the victim to the ground, and, though the placement made him uneasy, Morty allowed himself to be guided down atop the captive Rick’s legs. The man was squirming on the ground, feeling the instant effects of having his arms bound behind him and pinned by his own weight. He moaned around the gag and Morty didn’t care to assess if it was rage or pleading hidden in unheard words.

Cannibal handed the blade to Morty and the young cop held it carefully as the older man settled back in behind him. This time, Cannibal sat on his knees, and between the captive’s legs rather than upon them.

“Take of him as I take of you,” Cannibal growled against Morty’s ear, and if the boy had not been aroused before, he certainly was then.

Morty leaned over the man, even the simple shifting drew his pants and boxers down lower. The cop was keenly aware of his rigid cock resting against the victim’s clothed hip. Wanting to even the playing field, he used his free hand to unfasten the buttons of the man’s suit vest. Then he nimbly pushed the shirt below up to reveal smooth abdomen. Morty placed the knife here, and instead of taking a chunk, this time he skated the deadly edge in a swerving line. 

He watched in fascination as blood welled up in the valley of the cut just before the line spread open, like the great sea parting. Like a flower blooming open in slowmotion. Or more like a venus flytrap, pulling apart to lure in an unwitting victim. Like a witless fly, Morty was drawn right in. He made another cut and another, relished in the vibrations that ran through the victim as he screamed after each slice. Those waves shook through Morty too, teased his sex into dripping thick pearls of longing that wet the man’s leg and drew a dark circle of moisture on his clothes. Morty thought that stain looked out of place against the rivlets of red just above.

Knowing his protege was intoxicated, Cannibal resumed his own work. One hand snaked back around to sooth heated flesh, while the other tugged Morty’s garments down low enough to be out of the way. Then fingers slick–either with saliva or lube summoned from elsewhere, Morty wasn’t certain–Cannibal pushed two inside his newly christened lover.

The cop’s eyes blew out wide and he nearly dropped the blade. Shivers shook his body and a deep burning in his core came to mimic the ache in his hip. He was still bleeding, but he knew he hadn’t lost enough blood to justify how light headed he felt.

Then the fingers were thrumming, in and out, the rhythm like the beating of drums. A pounding echoed in his chest as his heart thumped along.

“At last, I’ve found my other half, and as we bring together this shattered world, our bodies the only thing in tact in the chaos, we too shall be brought together. Damned as blessed to be one unit,” Cannibal said like a preacher at church. Morty was his congregation, kneeling and calling out to god. Then he was begging for mercy as Cannibal brandished his own hard length and pressed inside the unholy virgin.

There was blood here, just like everywhere. There wasn’t ample preparation, but Morty found he liked the pain as much the pleasure, for it brought him some relief to know he hadn’t grown immune in passing over to the side of a reaper.

An act so primal had no right to soil Morty’s soul in such a beautiful way. Every shocking pulse of their forms was like an electric shock, lighting up his neurons and reminding him he was alive. He felt like he was soaring, drifting up with the plumes of toxin dancing all around as onlookers smoked like the world wasn’t already burning. For the first time in Morty’s life, though, the haze brought no visions of fire, but instead the loft of flight. They were clouds, not smog.

Even as his mind soared, his body still moved with human beastial impulse and his hips rutted like that of a dog in heat, and his chest rattled as his voice left in raspy cries. 

What part of him still retained his wit, looked down at the man flushed and terrified below and decided he wanted to feel this monster’s death rattle. Morty was lifted up and down as Cannibal drove into him with abandon, so his arms shook as he brought them up over his head and slammed the knife down hard into the bared and schismed stomach below. 

The dying man rocked hard and Morty cried out with the passion of it all. This would be no accident, this was his evolution. The bucking resistance of the dying form was just as fulfilling as the body moving inside him. Morty had never felt so full.

The man didn’t fade right away. Rather, choked around the gag and began to turn purple from lack of oxygen while his organs bled. Morty didn’t stop. He loved the colors, how they seemed to dance in his blurring vision. He moved the knife inside, carved open the spread ribs like an inexperienced surgeon. He did it fast enough, peeled open a window just in time to see the last hiccups of organs, moving like unfamiliar aliens, looking no more real than puppets. Then the magic dance was done as the insides stilled, but Cannibal and Rookie went on.

The followers watched the whole display. Unholy witnesses to Morty’s transformation. They went unnoticed, like the stitching in a quilt, there to hold it all together even if they held no warmth themselves.

Climax was all consuming. Morty’s body was racked with harsh spasms as his cock erupted ropes of white to streak the red and purple canvas. His body was flushed inside and out. His being clamored, his inner walls constricted and strangled out Cannibal’s every drop of satisfaction. Morty loved the hot pulse of it streaking his insides. It was a different sort of weapon, one that wielded explosive little deaths.

When it was done, Morty cooed and whimpered and his body was prone like a doll. Cannibal moved them, laid them out side by side with the wretched, biopsied corpse. The leader shooed his flock until they were left alone. 

Morty slipped out of waking for a time and, when he woke, was unsurprised to see the dead body beside him. If there was guilt inside he drowned it in the trembling ache that filled his form. He rolled over to cuddle against Cannibal’s exposed and sweatslick chest.

“Are we one now?” Morty jested.

“We are,” said Cannibal, firmly. “But there is still much stagnation we must rid from this world.” His tone was almost hollow, but low and purposeful like each syllable was essential. “We have to take from the wasters and return to the whole.”

Morty mused this with a soft hum, all his own uncertainty gone. “So you’re like Robin Hood?”

“Somewhat, except instead of gold, we give retribution to the needy. That which is corrupt must be destroyed.” 

“I thought there was no good or evil, so how do you pass judgement?”

“I don’t. I just break things that need to be broken.” That was when Morty realized, in a quiet sort of way, that the victims had been criminals for his sake and not out of any sense of nobility. Cannibal just liked to shake things up, crime lords had big digits on the Richter scales. What he sought was chaos, not justice, and though it had been said before, it was clear only then. Yet, even knowing this, Morty felt no sense of betrayal. After all, they were all the same when he got right down to it. Criminals, the stagnant, those that thrived on dragging others down. It turned out Morty wanted to break some shit too.


	7. FUBAR

Morty had always been a fast learner. While the other kids were still figuring out their ABCs, Morty was writing letters to his first pen pal. It wasn’t until he’d moved to the Citadel that he’d discovered such a trait was atypical of his  _ kind _ .

In any case, he caught on quickly and soon Cannibal had taught him everything about capturing an unsuspecting lure, properly skinning a human carcass, cooking the flesh, and setting up an avant garde crime scene. When asked what prompted the evocative display, Cannibal’s answer was more simplistic than Morty had expected.

“It’s just beautiful. I-it’s emotional. It’s hectic. It’s just what we do.”

Cannibal, for his part, when he wasn’t going out of his way to court Morty’s sensibilities, was a fan of true chaos and tended to target anyone that might make a splash. Morty, however, had a better plan.

“You want to kill my rivals?”

“You have some, don’t you?”

“I don’t want it to link back to me.”

“I have a plan for that.”

Police brutality was always forgiven. Morty caught on to this when the bonds of his do-good reality snapped. All he had to do was have the cops shut down the rings that gave Cannibal trouble. A handful stayed on lockdown and no one asked where the rest went. Escaped or toyed with, no one really cared. That made piling up bodies an easy task.

On top of that, it was excellent cover. Morty called in several tips of course, but he took down many on his own and gained a reputation on staff for being one hell of a cop. A great guy, not someone anyone would suspect.

His attitude took on an air of self assurance. He wasn’t exactly cocky, but every day that went by in which he wasn’t caught was another notch on his belt. His attitude sat better with some of the department more than others. Twinkie, for instance, had made it a ritual to harass Morty at least once a day. The rookie didn’t let it affect him, though he still found it pestersome.

On the other hand, Morty’s partner was the opposite of both those with ire and those with adulation. He seemed concerned. He had permitted Morty space for a time in which to adjust, but after a while he started to loathe that their relationship had become so methodical.

He became persistent in his pursuit to sway Morty back to his old self. 

He offered dinner and rides again as if none of the tension had ever been there. He seemed to have decided that their partnership was more important than his ego. Eventually, Morty had to concede if only to seem more normal. After all, he had no reason to deny his partner.

They started having dinner together again, but Morty was distant. Sensing that, perhaps, it was the atmosphere keeping Morty down, Rick decided to take matters into his own hands one day when they were off duty.

It was just past noon when Rick arrived at Morty’s door. He happily woke the younger man and told him with a gleeful smile, “We’re going to the fair.”

Morty gave his partner a disgruntled look. “Seriously?”

“Do you have other plans?”

Cannibal was out of town on business of some kind, and Morty could think of no adequate excuse, and that was how he ended up at the Citadel Fairgrounds with Rick. Morty felt almost like a reluctant child next to the widely grinning presence of his companion.

“Alright let’s get this over with. Where do you want to go?”

“Let’s hit the rollercoaster! L-let’s get wrecked!”

Rick’s new approach to the problem was to ignore it. The bad attitude, the glimpse of a bandage on the rookie’s hip, and any other signs of trouble that led where Rick dared not tread. And to both men’s surprise, it actually worked. 

Morty’s sour expression didn’t last more than a minute in the face of sixty mile-an-hour speeds and the hooting and hollering of his companion. Before he knew it, Morty was the one tugging the older man onto rides and bouncing up and down begging to play games.

Rick too felt more real than he had since joining the force, like the gentler him was allowed to come out and play. Play darts, toss, and lucky ducks. Only one of which garnered a prize.

“Thanks for this,” Morty said sincerely as they sat at an outdoor diner and shared a giant basket of chili fries, alongside the giant bear Rick had won. It had just gotten dark and fireworks in the shapes of Rick and Morty heads erupted in the sky.

“It was my pleasure. You seemed like you needed a break.”

Perhaps he had. All Morty knew for sure was that this was the most normal he had felt in ages. Like everything he’d done over the past month had dissolved and left only his core in tact. But the truth bubbled just below the surface, and he knew once they parted this day would be the part of him that felt extracted once more. So like taking a hit, he breathed it deep and tried to savor the high as long as he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally intended this chapter to be much longer, but time constraints crunched it. I might write a longer version at some point. I hope everyone is enjoying the story so far!


	8. COD

There was a sensation that began to take hold in Morty that felt very much like immunity. He was immune to the law, to consequences, to scrutiny. He could tear the skin off petty criminals one day and be a top tier cop the next. If one was careful, carrying out crime in the Citadel was almost too easy.

So easy that Morty started to question if Ricks were really as intelligent as they claimed to be. Because if they were, that called into question if they wanted to be caught. The rookie started thinking about that a lot. Was part of him a traitor?

He started to feel crowded in his own home. The elegant bottles that had once brought him so much comfort now seemed to leer. Their dancing colors became like spotlights from an overhead helicopter, zoning in as if to call him a crook.

He thought he might dispose of them, he just hadn’t gotten up the energy to do so yet.

However, it did not stop him from moving forward with his immunity to fuel him. He started taking out cops. His own colleagues, though from the opposite end of the force, of course. Morty could appreciate his own hypocrisy, but it still brought him immeasurable joy to run the blade beneath the flesh of broken fragments of the system. Drug dealers, bribe takers, men that didn’t deserve the badge had it peeled away from them as they screamed with no lips and convulsed from drained blood.

Morty liked draining the blood. They would simply perform their little rituals with their victims hanging upside down over storage containers. They’d take the skin away bit by bit, and let the color trickle down to be collected. Morty found it brought him the same kind of comfort that the bottles once had, a soothing kind of melancholy, an abject serenity.

He put off getting anywhere near narcotics. Yet, as the bodies piled up from all over the force and the uppers began to take the string of cop deaths seriously, Morty realized it highlighted him more than disguised him.

It wasn’t hard to choose who would go first.

“Oh wow, l-look at that. Hey, everybody–everyone look! _Morty_ brought in another druggie. Where’d you find this one? Huh? W-was he sucking your dick on break? Fig-figured you’d–thought you’d bring him in to keep quota?”

Morty tried to ignore Twinkie’s jeering, but the sound became like nails dragging down chalkboard, evoking a high pitch wail of _how dare you._ He started to fume as he seated the cuffed man down in the holding cell. By the time he turned around, his brows were furrowed and sinister intent was clear on his face. He moved to lunge and it looked, perhaps, to Rick like his partner was going to land a blow on the drunk cop’s jaw, because he reached out across Morty’s chest to stop him.

The defensive gesture was alarming enough that it stopped Morty in his tracks. He blinked slowly, no longer as angry as surprised. He looked up into Rick’s set expression and felt his heart flutter.

“Let it go, Rookie. He’s not worth it. He isn’t worth shit.”

Morty was greatful Rick had interfered. The last thing he needed was to draw attention to himself while he was at work. He continued the rest of the night casually and the next day too, although he was itching to get his hands around Twinkie’s throat.

He waited as long as he could, until he felt the moment was right. Twinkie’s shift ended an hour after Morty‘s but Morty was there waiting for him.

The rookie wasn’t worried about being caught, nobody liked Twinkie after all, so the list of suspects would be plenty long enough before they’d come knocking down Morty’s door.

The night was still and eerie quiet, as if even the Citadel expected what was coming next.

Twinkie fumbled into the front seat of his car, didn’t bother to fasten his seatbelt before taking off into the night. Morty bided his time, waited until they were far enough from the station to make his move.

Then he slithered up, wrapped the cloth around Twinkie’s mouth, and clamped his grip. They jerked to and fro as Twinkie’s feet slammed the pedals haphazardly. Eventually, they slammed to a stop on the shoulder and Morty felt the other man go slack.

***

By the time Twinkie came to, Morty had already driven them to a warehouse not too far off from the concrete river.

“Wha-what the fuck?” Twinkie blinked, trying to sort out his vision, but, even when it cleared, the world still appeared upside down. “The hell is going on? Where am I?”

He began to struggle, but he was bound by the legs. He looked up toward the ceiling and saw he was tied around the ankles and suspended on a hook like a rack of meat. Tilting his head back, he saw a kiddie pool on the floor below. “Hey! Let me out! Where am I?!”

“Christ, you are noisy!” Morty stepped into the cop’s line of vision. He wore a smile, he’d been waiting for his toy to come around.

“Rookie? Th-the hell is this? Some kind of kinky ass sex game?” Twinkie started to chuckle. “Baby a-all you had to do was ask!”

Morty scowled in reply, then moved forward to yank the man’s head up by his hair.

“Ow fuck! Not so hard!”

“You really are disgusting. You know that, don’t you? Actually, I don’t know why I bother. Of course, you know. All you Ricks are so self-deprecating! But it doesn’t stop you. Never for a moment do you stop to think that you might feel better about yourself if you stop treating everyone around you like shit.”

“I-I’m too drunk for this. Are we going to fuck?”

Morty’s smile returned, almost blissful. “No, dumbass. I’m going to kill you. _Slowly_. Painfully. I’m going to use your blood like a damn aphrodisiac and then he and I are going to fuck.” Morty tossed his head back toward Cannibal. The man stood silent in the shadows, opting only to observe this time.

“Th-the hell you going on about, you shit? You lay a finger on me and I’ll end you!”

Morty tightened his grip on Twinkie’s hair until the older man whimpered, as a gesture to remind him that Morty’s fingers were on him already. Then he brandished the knife he and Cannibal had used for all their rituals and pressed it against Twinkie’s cheek.

Twinkie continued to curse and hiss, his tone suggested agitation but a foolish lack of terror. Morty dug the edge into his flesh anyway, watched with immeasurable satisfaction as the filthy man’s skin peeled away as clean as any other.

Twinkie let out a revolting scream and thrashed harder. “I-I’ll kill you! Fucking kill you! You piece of shit! You can’t do shit! The others will fry your ass! I’m gonna–gonna strangle you myself when I get down from here!”

“You know,” Morty said with a gentle hum, “if I cut small enough slivers, you won’t die until you bleed out. Lets see how many pieces you make.”

Morty flayed the flesh slowly. Each cut was small and careful to hit as little of the vital places as possible. He pulled the rubbery cloak away to reveal the raw form below. He became entranced by it, lost in a hypnotic rhythm. Pulling away the pieces felt so simple, so easy. It was as natural as breathing, and it ripped away the heavy weight he wore on his shoulders these days. It felt pure.

Twinkie continued to expulse his vulgar nature until the blood dripping down, slowly leaking into the pool, became great enough and the pain intense enough that he at last understood his position. “P-please, no more. I’ll do anything! Stop! I-I’m sorry! Please s-s-stop…”

Morty was pulled from his ritual by the words. The man’s form was half-skinned, all muscle and shifting organ like a fucked up biology doll. All the color was gone from the half of his face that remained. He was pleading, with his voice only semicoherent.

Morty smiled sweetly. “Oh, we are long since past apologies, Twinkie. Besides, I couldn’t stop now if I wanted to.” He leaned in close as Twinkie started to weep. “And I _don’t want to._ ”

Morty wasn’t really aware of when the cutting stopped, of it was before or after he and Cannibal started to screw in the pool of blood, before or after the desperate screaming and contorting subsided. All he knew for sure was that it had been tremendously satisfying. And when it was over he struggled to feel anything at all.

Two days later the commissioner and all his ilk had decided their buddy Twinkie’s disappearance merited enough concern to prompt a stationwide safety discussion.

The commissioner’s favorite lackeys ran the different departments through the basic safety in numbers and self defense song and dance. All the while the narcotics’ lead officer stood at the front of the conference room, addressing grown men like children, an anger began to rise up in Rick. He’d been more temperamental since cops had become the targets of these killings. He didn’t like thinking his or his partner’s necks were on the line for the crime of trying to do some good. Even if the most recent missing person was far from his favorite.

“Any questions?” asked Officer Safety–as he’d been dubbed forty minutes ago by a tense body of distant officers.

“Yeah, I’ve got one.” Morty was startled when Rick’s voice cut through the near dead silence of the conference room. The rookie felt his pulse begin to quicken and found himself silently pleading his partner would fall back in line.  No such luck. “Why the hell isn’t anything being done to stop cops from getting killed? Six officers have been wiped out in the last two months. Three more are missing and the department is running us through harassment policies? What good is that going to do? When there is a fucking report of harassment the commissioner sweeps it under the rug!”

Now the rookie’s body was rigid with nerves. Everyone was staring at them and it didn’t take a Rick to figure out what harassment this Rick was referring to. “Sit down,” Morty muttered.

“No! I’m not just going to shut up. We are all in danger and no one upstairs seems to care.”

There was an eruption of chattering across the room and Officer Safety’s eyes were wide with panic as men turned to him for answers. “L-listen, we understand tensions are high but I assure you the heads of departments are doing everything in their power to–“

“To do what? Defend us? Catch the guy? Or just sweep it under the rug so we don’t look so damn incompetent? I’d love to fucking know!”

A chorus of agreement launched into the air and the room seemed to vibrate with agitation. Morty had wanted to keep quiet, to just ride out this display, but he was panicking. What if they actually met demands with a real investigation? What if he’d been sloppy somewhere? Seeing Safety was useless, his mouth moved without his consent. “Maybe we’re looking at this wrong!”

His higher voice drew the attention of everyone in the room. He had to finish his thought now.

“What do you mean?” Rick asked softly.

“I mean-“ Morty flinched in his seat, crossed his arms over his chest defensively. “I mean, every single cop that’s been targeted has a _reputation_. I know most of you know what I mean by that. So maybe they aren’t even being targeted because they’re cops. Maybe they got tied up in something messy and they couldn’t work their way out this time.”

“That may be a possibility,” Officer Safety replied, happy to have a scapegoat, before continuing on with his speech.

The hush in the room grew heavy. Suddenly, Morty could see the innocent from the guilty, it was written all over their faces. Relief, fear, like flashing targets red and green.

It wasn’t guilt that Rick saw in the face he couldn’t look away from. It was satisfaction. But why would Morty want everyone to stop asking questions?

Not for the first time, Rick felt a deep and painful suspicion well up inside. Morty’s behavior had been all over the place for months and the jagged little pieces were beginning to fall into place. Yet he hated it. Rick was loathed to admit he was beginning to fear his partner. Rookie wasn’t anything like his last partner had been. Then again, maybe that had been his downfall.

Still Rick didn’t want to jump to conclusions. So he did the next best thing. He snooped.

***

It was surprisingly easy to catch Morty’s apartment unattended. It seemed the rookie was busy a lot these days and Rick found himself hoping the younger man was just attending a cooking class or something else equally inoffensive.

The lock on the front door was simple and Rick managed to pop it open without damaging anything. The inside was just like he remembered from the few times he’d been there, save for the fact all of the bottles that usually lined the shelves and sills were piled up on the dining room table next to a garbage bag filled with more. It appeared Morty had been doing some cleaning before going out.

Without the bottles, the living room was somewhat bleak and empty. “Maybe he’s redecorating?” Rick said to himself to calm the chill running down his spine. It just didn’t look right, didn’t speak of the Morty Rick had come to know.

He checked the barren space, then soon after the bedroom, but nothing seemed amiss. There were no bloodstained clothes, no signs of hidden prisoners, no mysterious emails on his computer. The only odd thing at all was the bottles being out of place, so Rick sat in the kitchen to examine them.

Many had been chucked, all without being open, though some now rested broken in the bag. Down below them, peeking, was the furred ear of the stuffed bear Rick had won for Morty. Seeing that hurt in a way he couldn’t describe, but he pushed it down to focus on his task. Rick didn’t want glass cuts, so instead he started opening the bottles on the table and dumping their contents. Each one held only a slip of paper. No more, no less. They contained exactly what Morty had said they did: stray notions, desires, hopes. Some of them held thoughts one might expect, _I wish I wasn’t so broke. I hope I get better aim._ While others held depictions of dreams. Some were sweet while others caused Rick to flush.

Yet, it there were only a few Rick found truly interesting. _I want my new partner to like me. I want to do better. I want to help._

_Please, let me be good._

_I don’t want to hurt anyone._

_I don’t feel anything anymore._

Rick’s heart began to pound and he recalled some words of wisdom he’d once received from an unwise man, _There’s nothing wrong with putting your faith in a Morty. You just gotta pick the right one._

Rick, it seemed, was a poor judge of character.

***

Elsewhere, Morty was unaware of the home invasion. He was too busy basking in Cannibal’s bed at the club. A corpse lay slack on the floor, its organs divulged from its chest, while the two men cuddled on the mattress above. Someone would come soon to cart it away for dinner.

“I’ve been meaning to discuss something with you,” Cannibal murmured against the top of Morty’s head. He often liked to bury his face in the soft curls when they were done.

Morty was staring into the dark abyss of the ceiling. His stomach was heavy from what they’d ingested, and his thoughts were numb. He blinked at the sound and responded emotionless, “What’s that?”

Cannibal sat back to look at his lover’s face and began to swirl the sweat-soaked curls of the boy’s hair between long fingers. “Your partner. He’s been chatty lately.”

Morty blinked as the words slowly settled, he turned his head toward Cannibal, suddenly more alert. “You know about that?”

“Eyes everywhere,” Cannibal laughed and widened his eyes like a crazed animal.

“Don’t worry. He’s harmless. He talks a lot, but he’s not high enough up to make trouble.”

“Hmm. Maybe not, but I think making him quiet would send a message to the others to stop asking questions.”

Morty felt a fresh sickened blossom in his gut. “I thought we wanted them to question themselves. Make them wonder why they play along? Wouldn’t sending that sort of message be the opposite of what we want?”

Cannibal sighed and scrubbed his brows in annoyance. “Look Morty, the boss wants him dead and the cops quiet, okay? They can still come to see the light in time, but first we have to stay low.”

“Wait, you answer to someone?” Morty had heard no such thing up to this point.

Cannibal snickered. “Everybody works for somebody. But I’m more like a hired hitman than an actual employee.”

“Who were you supposed to kill?” Morty’s thoughts were suddenly overwhelmed by this new information. Cannibal’s whole pitch was independent action, so who would even try conducting him? And who had the kind of power to manipulate Cannibal in the first place? The very notion made him uneasy.

“Anyone I wanted. As long as it made enough noise.” Cannibal began to lap away the streaks of drying blood that had splattered against Morty’s collarbone.

The cop shuddered but his mind wasn’t on pleasure. “Why do they want that?”

Cannibal pulled back with a grin. “The same reason we do. Discord and disarray. Or maybe something more focused. They have their own plans for rebuilding the Citadel. In any case, they need us to make it happen. So I need you to make this happen. He has to die, Morty. Understand?”

Morty smiled in return, though on the inside he felt nothing for certain, his mind was too busy surging. Still he bent forward and moved his lips sensually against Cannibal’s and whispered, “Understood.”


	9. Show Me In

In the coming days pressure at the department reached a fever pitch. Cops were getting restless as more of their own went missing and nothing came of the investigations. It grew so severe that another conference was held, but this time they weren’t discussing safety regulations.

“This is an official warning from up top,” said the commissioner himself before a crowded room of all onhand officers and officials. “If the killings plaguing the Citadel don’t stop in two weeks time we’ll be facing a full department shutdown. That is why–“

It took a long moment for the commissioner to get everyone under control again as shouts of anger and uncertainty filled the room.

“ _That is why_ I want to pool our resources. All departments are being moved onto this case. Narcotics, if you have leads you pass them on to homicide. Domestic, been getting a lot of disturbances from repeat offenders? Bring them in and we’ll have interrogation all over ‘em. We need to work together if we don’t want to lose our jobs.”

Rick raised his hand and spoke only when he was called upon and the hubbub had ceased enough to be heard. “If the station is shut down then who the hell is going to protect the Citadel?”

The commissioner looked nervous. “There have been some talks about a military state.”

Rick’s rage came up in full. “You’re talking about martial law. Goddamn military state? None of this would have happened if President Morty actually made his underlings enforce anything! This station’s been a fucking hotbed for criminal activity for years and only just now are we supposed to face the consequences? Martial fucking law?! Anyone else seeing a goddamn problem here?”

Rick had to raise his voice to be heard over the rabble rising around him. It seemed his words were controversial and every cop had something to say.

It was only with the help of the microphone that the commissioner was able to be heard at all. “Like it or not, this is how it is! We shut down the killings or they shut down us!” With that he and his guards retreated to leave the gathered officers in turmoil.

Rick would have turned to Morty for support, but his partner hadn’t come in that day. Part of him was horrified that the young man had been the next victim. A bigger part was scared of just the opposite.

It didn’t take long for the first fear to be debunked since Morty eventually arrived, just later than usual.

“You missed a conference.” Rick said deadpan. His ass was on the desk before Morty had even sat down.

“Oh yeah?” Morty tried to be in good humor. “Did they talk about duck and cover?”

“Martial law, actually. If we don’t stop the killings. Soon.”

Rick watched Morty’s face open up with shock. It was comforting and familiar, less restrained than he’d become accustomed to recently.

“On whose order?” Morty asked in disbelief.

“All the way up. I get the feeling he was just waiting for us to fail.”

Morty’s face grew more reserved then and Rick felt like he was being locked out. His partner stopped looking him in the eye. “Then I guess we should try to help as much as we can.”

They spent most of the evening compiling their old reports from the various crime scenes, but Rick wasn’t analyzing paperwork nearly as much he was trying to deduce his partner's behavior. There was no denying it anymore. Morty was off and it was either trauma or involvement, and while Rick hoped for the former, he prided himself in being less naive these days.

So it wasn’t even a question when he decided to follow Morty after work. He was aching when the younger man took an unexpected turn and, instead of heading home, went toward the east end.

The hell is he going? Rick wondered as he followed cautiously a few yards behind.

Morty walked for nearly an hour before reaching a warehouse. He looked all around, oblivious to Rick’s presence, before slipping inside. _Oh, Rookie,_ Rick thought. _Why did it have to be this way?_

He pulled his pistol before following Morty inside. He was shocked to find the younger man simply standing there. “Whatcha up to, partner?” Rick asked without lowering his gun.

“I wish you hadn’t followed me,” Morty said without a hint of emotion.

Then, before Rick could react, there was a hand around his mouth and nose, a cloth full of chemical concealing his air. He gasped in surprise, then tried to hold his breath as he struggled, but it was too late.

 _Rookie,_ he tried to say, but his lips wouldn’t cooperate. Morty’s unmoving figure blurred in his vision as he slid to the ground. One final thought echoed before he heard nothing at all. _I’m sorry I failed you._


	10. I've Got Your Six

Rick came around to the sound of heated whispering.

“–military state. –totalitarian bullshit– should have told me!” Everything sounded like buzzing and he opened his eyes slowly to take in the sight of Morty vehemently talking to a sickly-looking Rick.

Thankfully, once he was more awake, it was easier to listen in.

“It isn’t going to affect us. Immunity was part of the deal. He wants the same thing we do.” The Rick wrapped his arms around Morty and drew him into a reluctant hug. “I’d never lead my little lamb astray.”

Rick felt a sickening twisted mixture of rage and jealousy, anger and betrayal. To make matters worse, he was watching all this through silver bars spaced about an inch apart. The ground below him was cold and his body ached like he’d been roughly handled. He still wore his uniform pants and tank top, but his coat, jacket, and holster had all been removed.

He flexed his fingers and, upon finding he could move them, he groped silently at his pockets. He was unsurprised that his knife and mace had been taken but was almost infuriated to find all else had been left in tact. He could feel crumpled bits of paper, a forgotten paper clip, and that wrapped gumball he’d been saving. It was almost as if they were daring him to Macgyver his way out. If he’d been a smarter Rick, perhaps he could have. He chastised himself for being self-deprecating now of all times, but it didn’t make him feel better. He sat up with a grown, knowing having an advantage of his consciousness would do him no good.

“Look who’s up! The little kitty that wandered into our house. You know what they say about the curiosity and the cat right? Old lovers with bad blood,” laughed the scarred Rick.

Morty turned and Rick saw surprise and perhaps alarm on his expression before it was buried by a cold leer and gritted teeth. “You shouldn’t have come here, Rick.”

“Yeah, well I was worried you might be tied up in some bad business. Guess I was right to worry. Please tell me this is some kind of drug ring or something?” Rick knew full well that wasn’t the situation, exposing a side job hardly merited a cage, but he had to say something and he was feeling short of quips. His heart was thrumming like a cricket locked in a box, chirping and throwing itself about. He wasn’t sure if it was from coming off the chloroform or seeing his partner on the other side of bars.

Morty didn’t get a chance to reply in any case. “No such luck, tiger. This is–welcome to the Cannibal butchery. I’m Cannibal, and, as the name might suggest, I played a rather vital role in all your recent games of find the body.” Cannibal laughed, clearly far too pleased to have a fresh audience. “We had something special planned for you, but you got all nosy! Still, if it’s all the same, we’d like to show off a little.” Cannibal moved then to the side of the cage and, for the first time, Rick realized he was woozier than he’d thought because he hadn’t taken in his surroundings at all. He was still in the warehouse, but moved toward the back, up against a sliding door that led either outside or into some sort of cargo bay.

When Cannibal strolled over to pull open the metal barrier, Rick saw it was much more of a storage unit, and it harbored some unfortunate storage. Inside, dangling from a pulley attached to the ceiling, was a corpse devoid of blood and flesh. The man–or what had once been a man–had eyes and a mouth wretched open in terror. Rick could still see the horror in that expression, even with the lips and eyelids torn away. 

Rigor mortis had set it ages ago. The corpse’s limbs were outstretched, the legs by the pulley ropes and the arms merely dangled, but all were stiff like a cartoon character locked in a freeze frame. The blood and any other visceral had been carried out ages ago, but this body had not been set with any of the usual preserves.

Rick gagged on the stench of it the moment the door was open, but Cannibal and Morty didn’t even flinch.  _ How used to the smell of death have you become? _ Rick thought with an even deeper sickness than the corpse beset him with.

“I bet you’ve been wondering where the local heckler had run off too!” Cannibal was all but giggling, clearly elated to show off his handy work to an unwilling party. Rick could tell this was the sort of man that lived for an audience, that had a lot of things to say, anything to say that might garner him the gazes he yearned for. It made Rick absolutely certain that, to Cannibal, these killings had meant nothing at all.

In his musings, Rick had nearly missed the point, but when his eyes drifted to Morty, struggling to grin, he realised. Another glance at the corpse confirmed his suspicion. Blacked out teeth stood prominent in the bloodied maw. “Twinkie. That’s-“ Rick heaved involuntarily. He didn’t think he could be more disturbed, but knowing the husk made it so much more real. 

“He deserved it. Deserved worse!” Morty pounced on the feeling of anger inside him and used it to fuel his justification. “He was a sham of a cop and even worse person.”

“Jesus christ, Rookie! He was a bully, not fucking Hitler!” Rick hadn’t meant to give in to an outburst, but he was growing more alarmed by the moment, as if the reality of his situation was just settling in. He stood and clasped the bars of his cage and found they were sturdy.

Morty seemed to flinch under the verbal assault. At last, Cannibal’s smile seemed to fade. He wandered back over, paying the reeking corpse behind him no mind, and wrapped one arm around Morty shoulders. “Don’t mind him, love. He just doesn’t get it.”

“Then explain it to me. Why would you do something like this? You’re a good person, a good cop. This isn’t who you are! Look at that corpse and tell me it doesn’t make you sick!”

Morty’s eyes fluttered warily to the body dangling from the ceiling. His expression slowly morphed from one of guilt to discontent. His eyebrows knit together and his hands balled into fists as Morty‘s eyes fluttered toward the body dangling from the ceiling. His expression slowly morphed from one of guilt to discontent. 

“You know what, it does make me sick! It makes me sick this is what I had to do to get anyone to take me seriously. It makes me sick that as I ran the knife under his skin, for a moment he still dared to doubt me.That it was only once he knew he was going to die that he started to show me any kind of respect!”

Rick’s resolve began to waiver in the face of Mortys own. It was like his first partner all over again, but this was so much worse. Because it had time to build, because he had time to make the mistake of getting close to this Morty, because part of him still didn’t want to pull the trigger. Not that it mattered much. At present, he had no way of defending himself.

“What are you going to do with me?“ asked Rick, unable to hide the slight quake in his voice.

“We’re going to kill you. Or rather, Morty is. I want to watch him drain the life out of you. Then we might fuck on your corpse. I haven’t decided yet. Speaking of which, I'll be right back. You kids have fun.” Suddenly Cannibal disappeared into the darkness of the warehouse and left the cops alone.

“Rookie, this guy is nuts. Why are you going along with him? Why did you do any of this?”

“Why?” Morty appeared as if he was musing the question himself. Like it had been at the tip of his tongue for ages, but couldn’t recall the query until just then. “Because–well b-because I felt useless. All I’ve ever been able to do is stand back and watch. I had to let criminals past the rim because of protocol, had to turn my eyes away from corruption, had to be reprimanded like a child by the very men I was sworn to serve.” Morty moved closer to the cage so he was just inches from the bars. He looked as if he was pleading with Rick to understand even as his aggression carried his cruel words. “My whole life has been passive. But the blade in my hand was substance! I felt something. Control. I was fed up, Rick. All I ever wanted was to do something good. Well, now I can dissect a rapist, or hollow out a dealer, or just give a murderer a taste of his own. I can consume the flesh of a lesser man and make his energy worthwhile. I can make change!”

“You know this is wrong, Morty. Change is why you became a cop. I know you went in expecting something different than what we got, but you have to know you aren’t just in the background. I know I can be a dick, but I hear you, Morty! I see you and everything you do to be the kind of man you wish everyone else was. I should have told you that sooner. I should have been there for you when you tried to push me away. But you weren’t the only one that was afraid!”

Cannibal returned, toting a long blade with a carved handle. “How touching. Morty had I have been over the fear thing. You weren’t really fooling anyone, Rick. Anyway, I find the confession charming and it will really make this much more satisfying. And why is that Morty?”

Morty swallowed thickly but his expression stayed icy. “There is no  _ should have _ , only  _ did _ .”

Cannibal snaked an arm around Morty’s shoulders. It seemed to be his go-to gesture for keeping the rookie focused. “That’s right,” he purred against the younger man's ear. “And  _ will _ .” He moved so Morty’s back was pressed to his chest and his arms were wrapped around the boy’s shoulders. Cannibal’s hand dangled the blade just before Morty’s chest. 

“Now?” Morty asked in a hushed and solemn tone.

“As good a time as any.”

Morty took the knife that he had used to peel the flesh of weaker men. It was freshly sharpened and glinted in the low glow of the slightly swaying overhead light. He pulled the knife to his hip, readying to stab out and through the bars for full impact. The holding was too small for Rick to escape it, so he stayed face-to-face with his grip on the bars.

“Please don’t do this. I don’t want the last thing I see to be you giving in to the very thing you hate.”

“What the hell does that mean?” The rookie spat.

“You hate that Ricks push you around. That you have to work so hard for their approval! You can change the world with the law. You don’t need him!”

“Kill him,” Cannibal snickered.

“We’re all just playing pretend anyway,” Morty snapped. “Have you looked around lately? Death is the only way things get any better. And then only for a while. Then it starts all over again. This is our destiny. My mother didn’t want me, just like her father didn’t want her, but here we are, Ricks and Mortys. I ended up in the same position as all my other selves. I thought I was outside of it all, but I was wrong!”

“Just because we’re pulled together doesn’t mean we have to kill each other! You want to stop playing? Then stop playing  _ his _ game! You really want to make a difference? You want to be the change the Citadel needs?” Rick slammed his hand into his pocket to dig out the slips of paper. He let the gumball hit the floor and roll away as he fumbled to unfurl the pieces. He hadn’t been able to part with them. He hadn’t known when he’d taken them why he'd wanted them, hadn’t known why he had kept them so long, but, in that moment, he finally understood. He pushed his hand through the bar and across his palm rested Morty’s desires. 

The papers were crumbled and faded in some places, but the message was clear. “Then be this Morty! Don’t sink to their level to try to escape them! Rise above! Be the Morty that loves a Rick rather than obeys him. Be the Morty that does the truly hard thing and make the right choice instead of the convenient one!”

Cannibal seemed rather tickled by the whole display. “I’d slow clap if wasn’t so fucking outdated! Do you really think–d-do you actually  _ believe _ a handful of fortune cookie fortunes and a little speech are going to turn Morty around? He’s tasted blood! He’s no fool. There is no going back, even you know it.”

Morty had been as ready as he could have been, but the little slips of paper had stopped him cold. He looked at them and felt a longing like nostalgia tug at his chest. That old familiar feeling of tears welled up in him and nearly made him sick. He hadn’t felt anything so intense since that night in the alley. He thought he had, had thought the sex and killing had stirred in him something new and more powerful, but those childlike ideations dwindled in the face of his own lost motivations. 

Even feeling so intensely, he knew he couldn’t delay. The weight of the blade in his palm and the hand on his shoulder were too heavy. He pushed down all of it and locked eyes with Rick, for what would likely be the final time. When his voice emerged, it was cold and powerful, hinting of the man he might have become under different circumstances. “He’s right, Rick. You can’t just stop killing once you've started. There is always someone else that needs to die.” Then he took a deep breath and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Then he pivoted on his heels, extended his arm, and rammed the blade deep into Cannibal’s stomach. The trusty steel cut right through vital organs with a subtle squelch. Cannibal’s satisfied, smug expression took a moment to melt away to make room for surprise. Then agony, as Morty used both hands to ram the blade up and into Cannibal’s heart.

“Shit,” Cannibal sputtered around the blood filling his throat. “Should have seen that coming.” He went slack against the blade and Morty released the knife to lower the man to the floor.

“I tear you down, to build us all up,” Morty said weakly.

Cannibal laughed through the rising crimson flood until his chest convulsed and he went still.

Morty stood with his mentor’s life smeared along his arms and chest. The stains were like the wings of a butterfly, drawn out and spectacular in their rich red hue. Morty had transformed again. 

He walked solemnly away and, for a moment, Rick thought he was never coming back, that Morty intended to leave behind all the men that had underestimated him. In a way, it seemed a fitting demise. 

Yet, Morty surprised him again when he returned with Rick’s jacket and holster. He clicked the gun free of its holding before using a key in his palm to open the cage. When the door swung open, Morty held the gun out to his partner. Rick took it cautiously. 

“You should know this place is coming apart at the seams. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. It won’t be good.” Morty spoke calmly but wouldn’t meet Rick’s gaze. “All I wanted was to do something good, but I got lost along the way. It wasn’t the first time. I’ve been messed up for a long while. So it’s okay. Now is the part where the hero kills the bad guy and escapes a little worse for wear, but wiser. Now is the part where you win.”

It was over now. Body on the ceiling, body on the floor, and the potential for thousands more. Morty was ready to be next. Rick lifted the gun and pressed it to Morty’s forehead. The boy didn’t cry or beg, just stood before the firing squad, ready to pay for his crime.

Rick could take that retribution. Could kill another Morty in the name of justice. For an instant, he almost pulled the trigger, knowing he could walk away scarred but intact until the next mistake rolled into town. But he didn’t want to play anymore. He lowered the weapon.

“Things aren’t as black and white as I’d like to believe. But the one thing I do know is that if there is any difference in the multiverse between good and evil, you are good. You’re good, Morty. And maybe believing that is just another mistake, but I don’t want put you down and get a new partner, a new Morty. Because there is never going to be another one like you.”

Now Morty did meet his gaze and, at last, long held tears sprang to the tips of his lashes and washed down his cheeks like cleansing rain. “S-so what are we going to do, Rick?”

“We’re going to go your place, clean up, put up some fresh bottles. Then we’ll call this in, say he kidnapped us both. Won’t be too hard to smudge it since we’ll be saving the station. It’s still playing, but at least it’ll be by our rules. After that, I don’t know, but I do know we’re going to do it together.”

Broken sobs prevented Morty from speaking, so he just nodded and took Rick’s arm to lead him out of the warehouse. 

Nothing in the world is really right or fair and the worst choices can have the best outcomes, and the best choices the worst. But as long as they were both alive, they still had a chance to make things better, without illusion or neglect to the deeply selfish nature by which all living things operate. They had wishes they wanted to fulfill, whatever the consequences might be. So the way they both saw it was that this wasn’t a good ending, not a just one. But then, it wasn’t really over, was it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With that, we bring this story to a close. How did you like it? If you're pondering about all those plot threads still dangling, don't worry! I didn't forget, but time was an element and I really wanted Morty's transition to be the heart of this tale. I certainly don't think Morty came out at the end totally stable and that's something I'd like to deal with another time. I have ideas for a sequel or two and maybe even a prequel. It might be ambitious, but time will tell!
> 
> Anyway, please, please, please let me know your thoughts! This is my longest ever finished fanfic and I hope it was satisfying. Thank you so much for reading until the end!


End file.
